Court Fines YouTuber For Posting IPTV Piracy Tutorials

[SaM]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak:

Operated by Bruno Gustavo Januario, the 'Jorge Dejorge’ channel is packed with technology-focused videos offering reviews, unboxing videos, tips and tutorials, most of which are entirely non-problematic. However, a decision to publish advice on how to obtain TV channels via pirate IPTV services attracted the attention of ABTA, the powerful Brazilian Pay TV Association. ABTA, which represents the main cable TV and channel operators in the country, including Globosat, Sky, NBC Universal, Fox and Discovery, filed a lawsuit against Bruno Gustavo claiming that his instructional videos infringed their rights.

In his response, the channel owner described himself as an “ordinary person” with a YouTube channel and denied that he’d named any of the TV operators in his videos. In any event, he argued, they were informative in nature and did not aim to instruct people on how to break the law. Nevertheless, in April 2018 a judge at a Sao Paulo court handed down an order that required hosting and search companies, including Google, to remove the videos in question and Bruno Gustavo was told to stop publishing such content in the future. Failure to comply would result in a fine equivalent to $1,740 for each offense. However, according to a Globo report, the judge held back from compensating the TV companies as he believed their trademarks had not been infringed. This resulted in an appeal from both sides to the Court of Justice of Sao Paulo which was heard in April 2020. In its ruling, the Court found that the operator of the Jorge Dejorge channel must pay compensation to ABTA for breaching its members’ rights with his “fraudulent” videos. “The Court found that the videos improperly reproduced the channels’ trademarks, infringed their copyrights, and amounted to unfair competition against ABTA’s members,” reports TorrentFreak. The Court says 10% of any revenues earned by the channel since the illegal content was first published in February 2017, must be handed over to the TV companies.

“The Jorge Dejorge operator must also pay $8,721 in compensation to the broadcasters adjusted for interest at the rate of 1% per month from the publishing of the first content in February 2017,” the report adds. “In addition, the defendant was ordered not to publish any more content that infringes on the rights of the pay-TV stations and was told to pay the costs of the lawsuit plus attorney fees.” Gustavo’s legal team is planning an appeal.