Pay-TV Pay-Per-View Piracy Suits on the Decline, TRAC Says

The number of lawsuits filed in federal courts about cable and satellite TV payments in FY 2016 is expected to be down 42 percent from FY 2016 and down 56.2 percent from FY 2011, said a report Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. TRAC said the first 11 months of FY 2016 saw 613 such suits, putting the year on pace for 669 suits. There were 1,158 a year earlier and 1,526 five years earlier, said TRAC, which is run out of Syracuse University. The suits usually involve restaurant and bar owners allegedly pirating signals by showing pay-per-view programs in their establishments without paying the commercial rate, said the clearinghouse. The amount of such litigation grew sizably in FY 2010 and 2011 and plateaued for a time before dropping notably in FY 2016, TRAC said. It said much of the litigation comes out of U.S. District Court in Houston, which had 101 of the 613 suits. That court also ranked first with the highest rate of filings, followed by U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, TRAC said.