The Latin American region still suffers from piracy. In fact, the region has never developed a strong culture of respect towards copyrights. The numbers of the piracy rates in Latin America can support this statement. Even though there has been an increase in investment toward stronger protection for copyrights in line with international standards. Since piracy stimulates black markets and it scares creators and investors into the region, it can still be seen as a serious treat for the market. The economic value of the loss of revenue due to piracy in the Latin American region remains high.
Shortly, there has been established an initiative against Piracy on Pay Televison, named APRODICA (La Alianza Contra la Piratería de la Televisión Paga). It is an initiative from international TV operators and programmers in the Central American region. Their goal is to strive against piracy in the region by teaching and learning people not to be a pirate.
The association is based and created in Guatemala, in 2013, and since February it has members as DirectTV and other international operators. “We believe it´s important to share our knowledge, efforts and achievements with Aprodica. Both entities intend to raise awareness of the problem and impact of piracy on the pay television industry in Latin America, and thus we believe that the market and consumers will be significantly benefited by this”, said Marta Ochoa, senior director of Fraud Management for DirectTV.
In February in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia the Andina Link 2014 took place, the region´s main exhibition of telecommunications and convergent technologies. Here Alliance, a non-profit association formed by international TV operators and programmers such has announced their cooperation with Aprodica. The association will offer their services to fight against free to air piracy and the use of equipment to receive this signals. Since the creation of Aprodica, they are establishing many tools to stop this unauthorized broadcasting transmission. Still they miss support from the government judiciary system to fully reach the scope they could achieve in their mission to stop piracy in the region.