ABS-CBN Corp. filed a complaint in US Federal Court in the Southern District of Texas against Anthony Brown and 1700 Cuts Technology, seeking damages in excess of $4 million for allegedly pirating its content and trademark infringement.
The lawsuit claimed that Texas local resident Brown promoted and sold modified illegal set-top boxes through several Facebook.com pages operated by Brown and 1700 Cuts Technology that enabled buyers to gain access to ABS-CBN’s live programming without paying the appropriate fees for such services.
The Facebook pages that were used to promote the illegal set-top boxes included two personal profile pages and a business page for “Lifeforgreatness.”
“Beware of these operations that are not licensed or affiliated in any way with ABS-CBN,” Elisha Lawrence, ABS-CBN assistant vice president and head of Global Anti-Piracy, said.
“We will continue to protect customers by shutting these operations down. The only genuine ABS-CBN internet subscription services are TFC on cable and satellite, IPTV and TFC.tv,” she added.
Jun Del Rosario, ABS-CBN managing director for North and Latin America, said the network remained steadfast in protecting the content from ABS-CBN’s team of hardworking creative and technical people who needed to be rightfully acknowledged and compensated for their work.
Del Rosario did not mince words about the pirates.
“What these pirates do is literally rob from this ecosystem of content creators, pretend to own the content, and scam customers by making money off that content,” he said.
“ABS-CBN is committed to stopping them and bringing them to justice,” Del
Rosario added. ABS-CBN is represented by Steven Abbott and Stephen Gaffigan and Christine Daley of Stephen M. Gaffigan, P.A.