ABS-CBN wins antipiracy case

MANILA, Philippines–ABS-CBN Corp. won a $25-million antipiracy suit in Florida versus an individual who ran more than 90 pirate sites that were found infringing the copyrights and trademarks of ABS-CBN’s popular TV shows and movies, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The network said ABS-CBN Film Productions Inc. (Star Cinema) and ABS-CBN International received the judgment from the US Federal Court in the Southern District of Florida against Vonn Ryan Motomal from New Zealand.

Under the terms of the judgment, Motomal’s pirate sites will be transferred to ABS-CBN.

“This is another example of our relentless campaign against all pirate sites wherever in the world the pirate is located. This time we have found the pirate operating out of Auckland, New Zealand,” said Elisha Lawrence, ABS-CBN international’s assistant vice president of global antipiracy.

“This is another instance wherein ABS-CBN pursued a pirate, a content thief, and won,” said ABS-CBN Global COO Raffy Lopez.

“We will continue to challenge anyone who will undermine the integrity of our copyrighted body of work to rightfully protect the talented creative teams that worked hard to produce them.”

“We are continuing to receive reports that these pirate sites contain dangerous malware which cause substantial harm to people including identify theft of their financial information, phishing attacks where people receive e-mails from their banks asking for passwords and attacks on their e-mail contacts,” Lawrence said.

“Just investigating these sites caused our computers to become infected with numerous viruses. We will not rest until every one of these pirate sites are down and the owners of these sites are held financially responsible and punished,” he added.