AEPOC, the European Association for the Protection of Encrypted Works and Services, welcomed endeavours in the Nordic countries and especially Sweden to develop a stronger legal framework against audio-visual piracy. AEPOC’s recent Board of Directors and Ordinary General Assembly meetings held in Stockholm on 12 June, focused on the situation of Pay-TV piracy in Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

Guest speaker David Würgler from STOP, the Scandinavian TV-Organisations against Piracy and longstanding partner association of AEPOC, gave a comprehensive update and highlighted different successful cases of law enforcement and industry cooperation, including the issue of card sharing. David Würgler explained that due to the rather minimalist implementation of the Conditional Access (CA) Directive in Sweden, the country’s set of legal threats for the users of illegal equipment is very limited currently.

All other Nordic countries have much tighter legislation in place and Denmark is even considering introducing imprisonment of up to 6 years for CA-crimes. Especially Norway is very active regarding law enforcement and the specific know-how needed to assess audio-visual piracy crimes. In contrast to its neighbouring countries, Sweden still lags behind in many areas. However, different legislative moves within Sweden’s parliament indicate that the private use of pirate cards will be illegal by 2009.

Further details on the manifold and intense anti-piracy actions in the country were presented by Lena Melinder, AEPOC representative of Boxer TV-Access and host of the Stockholm meeting, together with Outi Leijon of Tevefolket. Tevefolket and its counterpart Filmfolket are two dedicated national coalitions of Sweden’s Pay-TV operators and together with the film industry promote pay content and movies.

Summarizing AEPOC President Jean Grenier said: “All in all we are more than pleased to say that audio-visual piracy is increasingly achieving utmost attention from all relevant stakeholders. The EU, national legislators as well as law enforcement are working closely with the different players of the Pay-TV industry. While there are still many areas of improvement, we do not record any set-backs, and thus notice an accelerated development into the right direction.”