The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting of Asia (CASBAA) is getting active - finally. And it is on the piracy front that it is showing its teeth. It has placed India amongst the Top 3 rogue list of countries where cable TV signal piracy is escalating. The other two: the Philippines and Thailand.

"The Association will undertake and support new initiatives to protect member company intellectual property rights wherever possible," said CASBAA Executive Director Simon Twiston Davies. "As part of our anti-piracy activities significant funding has been set aside to undertake prosecutions to the fullest extent permissible in several markets."

The CASBAA Legal Committee, is working closely with CASBAA CASBAA the Motion Picture Association of America on this issue.

Recently, it spearheaded the switching off of satellite signal decoders operated by illegal cable systems in the Philippines as part of a "fingerprinting" exercise. Among cable operators suffering from disabled and de-authorised channels were the Fil Products systems in Dumaguete and Butuan. Among the channels withdrawn from distribution to the pirate cable systems were AXN, Discovery Asia, Animal Planet, Hallmark and Nickelodeon.

"Fingerprinting" enables a channel supplier to identify a "rogue" domestic set-top box that has strayed outside of its licensed market and for the channel supplier to subsequently disconnect the set top.

"This is just the start of a long-term CASBAA campaign to bring home to pay-TV operators and others the damage that intellectual property theft can do to all parties concerned with the legal distribution of multichannel television and datacast services," adds Twiston Davies. "In some markets the problem is reaching crisis proportions, not only having a significant impact on the channel suppliers but also on legally licensed and operated cable systems, equipment suppliers and conditional access suppliers."