Tackling TV piracy in Guatemala

By Mayora IP

Guatemala City hosted the last 2019 edition of the Anti-Piracy & Contents Summit, an event organized by TODOTVMEDIA and Latin America Anti-Piracy & Intellectual Property Consulting (LAAPIP). Since 2015 the event travels through the main cities of Latin America to analyze, debate and find solutions to the problem of piracy in audiovisual content throughout the region.

In December 4, 2019, the industry’s main players (cable operators, public regulatory institutions, content owners, among others) gathered to discuss the main challenges for Guatemala, a country where 55% of homes have cable TV but still has a strong informality of cable companies, as 59% of them are not legally registered. The informality causes over USD 19 million annual loses for the government and over USD 30 million anual loses to programmers and content owners.

“It is impossible to control everything, so our main goal is to generate knowledge and awareness from the consumers. People must understand that piracy implies a crime, therefore the government needs to tackle it as a social phenomenon that needs to be challenged by everybody, not just cable operators or programmers”, said Víctor Barrios, Innovation Director at Guatemala’s Intellectual Property Office (RPI, for its Spanish acronym).

As possible solutions, Barrios and other speakers at the Anti-Piracy & Contents Summit talked about customs personnel trainings, new regulations and the creation of a technical commission formed by public and private actors.