Anti-piracy coalition the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has welcomed the verdict from the Paris Judicial Court, which it says clearly confirms that the company Spliiit has violated the law with respect to ACE members Apple, Disney and Netflix – notably by engaging in acts of complicity in violating the terms of service, unfair competition and trademark infringement.

The court validated ACE members’ claim that Spliiit is engaging in the practice of illicit password selling. This is the practice by which commercial operators illegally sell or facilitate, without authorisation, the sale of existing consumers’ streaming service login credentials to multiple other users, while charging those users a commission for these unauthorised transactions. The practice is not about sharing passwords with family members, noted ACE. It is about the violation of the individual terms of service put forth by each content owner and streaming service. The Court held in this regard that “the sharing of subscriptions to services offered by Apple, Netflix and Disney with third parties, engaged exclusively for the purpose of such sharing, constitutes a violation by the holders of these subscriptions of the terms and conditions of the contracts binding them.”

“We thank the Paris Judicial Court and our enforcement and industry partners for this important ruling,” commented  Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association. “Services that turn subscription credentials into a marketplace exploit creators, consumers, and legitimate platforms. This ruling reinforces that unauthorised access and credential abuse have real consequences, and it strengthens the fair, secure digital marketplace that lawful services depend on.”

The Court found in this regard that by contributing to the creation of an illicit market for its own profit by stating that the service “does not infringe copyright and does not violate the platforms’ terms of service, Spliiit provided consumers with general information that is inaccurate, particularly regarding the services offered by Apple, Netflix and Disney”. The Court considered that Spliiit has therefore substantially altered consumers’ economic behaviour with respect to said services by encouraging them to use its platform for connecting individuals for the purpose of sharing subscriptions.

ACE noted that its members have initiated this legal action as part of an approach to support the growth of the legal marketplace for creative content, reduce unauthorised access to creative works, protect the hard work and livelihoods of the millions of people who work in the creative economy, and to serve content to consumers in a safe environment without malware.

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Business, Content, Pay TV, Piracy, Policy, Regulation, Rights

Tags: ACE, Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, password sharing, Spliiit