On August 14, a judge for the US District Court of the Central District of Texas awarded $493,850,000 statutory damages from defendants Juan Barcan and Juan Nahuel Pereyra to DISH Network and Sling TV LLC, for almost 2.5 million violations of (“Defendants”) on Plaintiffs’ claims for violations of §§1201(a)(2) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from the operation of four piracy sites, live-nba.stream, freefeds.com, sportsbay.org and sportsbay.tv. The original complaint by DISH and Sling TV was filed in mid-2021, which identified the four sites offering TV channels online with “No Blackouts. No signup.” Many of these channels were licensed to DISH and Sling TV, and the pirates circumvented their DRM platform, enabling the defendants to redistribute Sling programming without authorization from DISH or Sling.

Have you received a USPS certified letter similar to the one shown in the picture? Here at NagraStar, we send all first letters certified for tracking and legal purposes. These letters contain sensitive information, and for that reason, NagraStar must ensure that the letter reaches its intended recipient. Many choose to deny signing for the letter, and thus it is returned. Commonly, certified mail is sent by lawfirms and government agencies, and refusing the letter could result in legal ramifications. If you receive such a letter, NagraStar highly recommends accepting it. If you choose to ignore these letters and emails from NagraStar, you could be referred to our law firm, HNB, for litigation. Do not ignore the letter, and please contact NagraStar as soon as possible to resolve this legal matter.

After reporting on countless piracy lawsuits it's hard not to conclude that, from a human perspective, most are miserable affairs with regularly depressing outcomes. But then there's the lawsuit targeting two men behind Louisville Media Box, a one-stop shop for everything pirate IPTV. It appears to exist in a strange parallel universe where normal rules don't appear to apply. In October 2021 when DISH Network filed yet another lawsuit against a pair of IPTV sellers in the United States, nothing stood out as particularly unusual. The lawsuit named Kevin Hibdon and James Meadows, the alleged operators of Louisville Media Box, a local one-stop-shop catering to the community’s pirate IPTV needs.

The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) today announced that a federal court in California has granted summary judgment on all claims in an IBCAP coordinated lawsuit against Jadoo TV, Inc. and its U.S.-based CEO, Sajid Sohail, finding them liable for direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. “This ruling goes further than many other copyright cases coordinated by IBCAP. Here, the owner and CEO of one of the most popular South Asian services offering infringing content will not be permitted to hide behind a corporate shield and has been found personally liable for the damages caused by his and his company’s copyright infringement,”

The U.S. Government's Patent and Trademark Office will host a public roundtable to discuss future anti-piracy and counterfeiting strategies. The agency notes that piracy causes billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy each year. No concrete proposals are mentioned but rightsholders will likely suggest pirate site blocking as an option. For many years, U.S. lawmakers have considered amending legislation so that today’s online copyright issues can be addressed more effectively. Many proposals have come and gone, without resulting in any significant updates. Calls to change current legislation persist, however.

The impact of piracy has been debated for some time. Now the United State Chamber of Commerce, an independent group, claims that video piracy from services like IPTV companies causes $115.3 billion in damages to the GDP and 560,000 lot jobs every year. This comes from a report over at TorrentFreak. This comes as the United States government has announced plans to hold a round table event this fall to look at ways to stop video piracy. So what are IPTV services? In short, an IPTV service is an illegal live TV streaming service promising to give you all the big networks like ESPN but for a fraction of the cost of legal services.

Utah federal judge has struck down a $469 million patent infringement verdict against Dish Network. The plaintiff, parental control service ClearPlay, had claimed Dish’s Autohop technology, which allows consumers to skip commercials on Dish’s Hopper DVR, infringed on two patents. EchoStar, the manufacturer of set top boxes containing the feature, is also a defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed in 2014. The court’s decision comes just over a week after a civil jury unanimously ruled in favor of ClearPlay, imposing the original verdict for damages, and Dish filed a motion challenging the outcome.

​After the FBI shut down his Gears pirate IPTV empire, YouTuber Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka Omi in a Hellcat, pleaded guilty along with two co-defendants. One was hired by Carrasquillo to work on the service from home. His sentencing memorandum claims that when he tried to quit, gunmen threatened him on two occasions after Carrasquillo said he would kill him. When the federal government shut down pirate IPTV services owned by Pennsylvania and New Jersey man, Bill Omar Carrasquillo in November 2019, it became one of the most high-profile anti-piracy operations ever conducted in the United States.

​In June 2022, the operators of pirate IPTV service Nitro TV were ordered to pay $100 million in damages to broadcaster DISH Network. To recover at least some of the millions made by the service, DISH obtained permission to seize and sell a house worth almost $1 million. After failing to participate in the original lawsuit, the defendants are now trying to defend their house. After being sued by DISH Network in 2021, former Nitro TV operators Alex Galindo, Anna Galindo, Martha Galindo, and Osvaldo Galindo, made no real attempt to fight the lawsuit.

Popular live TV streaming portal USTVGO appears to have shut down its service. A brief message on the site says "Sorry, we are closed," leaving millions of users with plenty of unanswered questions. While the reason for the sudden decision is unknown, rightsholders and anti-piracy outfits already had USTVGO on their radar.​​ With millions of monthly users, USTVGO was one of the most visited live TV streaming portals on the Internet. As its name suggests, the portal focused on US channels, making it a popular site for cord-cutting Americans or those living abroad.

Six months ago MPA-Canada, ACE, and Rogers Media teamed up to shut down IPTV provider SmoothStreams in Canada. The lawsuit already lists 224 records but no trial is expected anytime soon, even if it gets that far. In the meantime, photos of the service's servers and new details of the shutdown operation have appeared in a Federal Court order. When users of popular IPTV provider SmoothStreams.tv began reporting issues with the service mid-July, few could’ve predicted events to follow. Our previous report covers events in finer detail, but essentially SmoothStreams had been under investigation since 2018 and the time had arrived to take it down.

Telegram has complied with an order from the High Court in Delhi by sharing the personal details of copyright-infringing users with rightsholders. The order, which was issued despite fierce opposition, sets a precedent in India. The Court, meanwhile, clarifies that the information can also be shared with the Government and police. With over half a billion active users around the globe, Telegram is one of the most used messaging services. The application is particularly popular in India, where more than 20% of its user base resides. This includes a small subset of rather persistent pirates.