AKTV HAS ENTERED INTO COOPERATION AGREEMENT WITH FASTSHARE.CLOUD

At the end of last year, the Association of Commercial Television (AKTV), together with TV Nova and FTV Prima, concluded an agreement with the operators of the Fastshare.cloud service, Inside Invest, and its former operator, Fusion Media. The agreement sets out the terms of an out-of-court settlement. The operators of Fastshare.cloud will ensure that no copyrighted works of AKTV members appear on their service, and once these conditions are met, the commercial TV broadcasters will end the court and enforcement proceedings. The agreement also includes payment of the costs of legal representation of TV Nova and FTV Prima in related litigation.

Commercial TV broadcasters who are members of the Association of Commercial Television have succeeded in reaching another agreement aimed at greater protection of their content in the online environment. The commercial broadcasters’ legal action against the operators of the Fastshare.cloud repository resulted in an out-of-court settlement agreement in November 2023.

The subject of the agreement is Fastshare.cloud’s commitment to take technical measures to ensure that the works of the Nova and Prima TV groups are not available on and cannot be uploaded to the service as required by the Copyright Act with effect from 5 January 2023. The list of protected works is continuously updated to take account of new titles or new series episodes. In addition, the former operator of Fastshare.cloud reimbursed the commercial broadcasters for the legal and court costs they incurred in protecting the copyright in Fastshare.cloud. In accordance with the agreement, the broadcasters subsequently terminated the legal and enforcement proceedings against the former and current operators of Fastshare.cloud.

“After a six-month trial period, we can now see that our requirements as a copyright holder are not excessive and can be met without any problems, just as the operators of Fastshare.cloud do. At the moment, there is a minimum of our content on the service and if we find our works that the filtering has not yet detected, we communicate promptly and gradually improve the filtering together,”

says Klára Brachtlová, President of the Association of Commercial Television.

“Internet piracy remains a clear priority for us. We are therefore still ready to negotiate with other internet storage operators and jointly set up conditions and technical measures to prevent illegal sharing of our content,”

adds Brachtlová.

In addition to active legal protection of copyright, the Association of Commercial Television has long focused on educational activities. As part of these activities, it operates an information website on copyright, which is available at aktv.cz/copyright. Interested parties will find here a glossary explaining terms on the topic of intellectual property protection, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), and regular news on internet piracy. There is also an up-to-date series of articles on the new study Online Copyright Infringement in the European Union, published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).