Justice department and Multichoice partner against piracy

The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the Multichoice Group have signed an anti-piracy memorandum of understanding (MOU).

The MoU will cover the following areas of collaboration:

• Policy development and regulatory frameworks;
• Capacity building and experience sharing;
• Intellectual property rights protection and anti-piracy partnership, and
• Monitoring and compliance.

The department’s Director-General, Advocate Doctor Mashabane, said: “[This] marks another milestone in the government’s efforts to fight broadcast and content piracy, which continue to drain the fiscus of billions of rands a year.

“Committing to signing this MOU shows our commitment to protect our creative industry so it can grow and attract investment – something that cannot happen without the Government’s intervention.”

MultiChoice South Africa CEO Mark Jury said: “As MultiChoice evolves from a traditional video entertainment business into a diversified platform business focused on technology, we are committed to promoting legitimate content consumption and supporting the creative industry.

“We look forward to strengthening partnerships with a number of stakeholders, including the department, to wage a coordinated war against piracy.”

The department explained that the MOU paves the way for enforcement and deterrence.

“This partnership will bolster enforcement actions against piracy, sending a strong deterrent message to perpetrators and significantly aiding in the revision of pertinent laws and the enhancement of training for judicial and enforcement agencies.

“The current legislative gaps means there is no incentive for hosting providers and other intermediaries, including financial, to work with legitimate role-players in the Audio-Visual (AV) content value chain or with the police to reduce piracy and block online pirate websites and the sharing of pirated content.

“Ideally such measures should form part of a broader policy and legislative response to deal with cybercrime, cyber piracy and cyberterrorism through blocking access to infringing domains/IP addresses, reducing harm through education of the public, disrupting payments and improving financial investigation and enforcement responses to these actions,” the department said.