Copyright protection organization BREIN holds suppliers of IPTV subscriptions responsible for verifying whether their sources for internet TV channels are legal or not. In general this is not the case. Suppliers advertise that when buying their subscription you do not have to pay separately for pay-channels for films, series and sports. Such a compilation subscription costs a fraction of the total sum of subscriptions to the individual channels. “Too good to be true”, says BREIN managing director Tim Kuik, “usually means it’s not legit”. This kind of commercial suppliers who use internet sources are obliged to verify beforehand whether such sources are legal or not. This follows from the decision in GS Media rendered by the highest European court (CJEU) last week.
BREIN already instituted proceedings regarding boxes which have been preprogrammed to use illegal link sites. In said proceedings the European Court was also asked for a preliminary ruling. The hearing in that matter will take place on 29 September. The question in that matter is inter alia whether the providers of said boxes infringe themselves by reason of said preprogramming which connects to sites that structurally link to illegal films and series. With the decision of the CJEU of last week it is likely that this question will be answered in the affirmative and that these suppliers can eventually be held liable for the damage they cause. In the mean-time many of such suppliers also started offering IPTV subscriptions which can be installed on their boxes or on other devices.
The suppliers themselves argue that they are allowed to use illegal sources because –according to them- their customers do not infringe when streaming. They believe that the ban on downloading from an illegal source does not apply to streaming. BREIN disagrees because the law explicitly stipulates that the temporary download which is allowed for streaming does not apply to use from illegal sources. However, this concerns the question whether individual users of streams from illegal source infringe or not. That question is different from the one whether it is legal to offer access to illegal streams. That is patently illegal and BREIN wrote letters to suppliers of IPTV subscriptions to warn them that they are held to verify beforehand whether the sources for the IPTV channels they use are legal. If the suppliers are not willing to do so, then BREIN will institute court proceedings.
Consumers should be aware that right owners regularly remove illegal sources for IPTV channels when and where possible. After all, they are not compensated for the use of such channels. In that case buyers of the IPTV compilation subscriptions do not have access anymore to such channels and actually pay for nothing. “This is why this kind of IPTV supplier is constantly looking for new illegal sources. We now point out to them that the result of such a search should be precisely that they do not use such illegal sources,” says Kuik.