IBC bans Gotech as Nagra wins US court case

The US District Court for the Southern District of Texas had awarded content security provider Nagra’s US division US$101 million in a lawsuit against China’s Zhuhai Gotech Intelligent Technology and two related companies. In a related move, organisers of the IBC exhibition have banned Gotech from exhibiting this year.

Nagra filed the case alleging Gotech’s technologies and services were primarily designed and intended to circumvent content protection technologies following an investigation by Kudelski Security and Nagra Content Protection Services.

Nagra had argued that the three companies, Zhuhai Gotech Intelligent Technology, Gotech International Technology and Globalsat International Technology, manufactured and distributed unauthorised set-top boxes under brand names including Globalsat, AZAmerica, NAZABox, Captiveworks and Limesat, as well as operating Internet Key Sharing servers from servers located in the US, in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Federal Communications Act.

“We have demonstrated in our security labs that Gotech has impacted every major conditional access system and is also providing an illegal content sharing solution, impacting pay-TV operators everywhere,” said Maurice van Riek, SVP and head of content asset security for Nagra. “We appreciate that the damage caused by the wrongdoing of Gotech has been recognized by the judge and that the court has ordered Gotech to stop harming our industry with their products and practices.”

Kudelski Security identified Gotech’s alleged piracy activities through the ongoing monitoring of global piracy activities from its locations in Switzerland and Brazil. Kudelski Security idenfiied over half a million users connecting to the illegal Gotech services that were the subject of the lawsuit. However, the company estimates that there were more than three million end users connected to various Gotech servers.

In addition to ordering the damage payment, Judge Kenneth Hoyt banned Gotech from manufacturing and selling any equipment or offering any services that could be used for piracy, as well as ordering Gotech to turn over any existing equipment or software that could be used to commit piracy. The judge also ordered third parties providing services that enable Gotech’s alleged piracy to stop doing so, and also ordered the ownership of Gotech’s primary website domain to be transferred to Nagra.