Extra Terrestrial Piracy

Some call him a pirate, others say he is just a shrewd businessman. He has made money by plucking satellite programmes off the satellite channels..Nahil Wijesuriya, a 51-year-old self-made million aire, is a likeable guy. Stockily built with short-cropped hair, his eyes twinkle and he laughs easily. He likes the fun things of this world and revels at the chance of a ringside seat to excitement. He certainly had all that when he set up the zanily named Extra Terrestrial Vision, Sri Lanka´s fifth television station..ETV has bloomed by helping itself, free, gratis and for nothing, to BBC signals taken off satellites orbiting the earth. 'It is rather like this' explains Mr Wijesuriya. & 'If your neighbour´s mango tree overhangs your garden, you are free to take the fruit over your property. That is perfectly legitimate. You are not breaking any law. The BBC signal was plucked from the sovereign air space of Sri Lanka. We did not do anything illegal and despite a great deal of effort, nobody has been able to establish that we have.'.The BBC tolerated it for a while. But not only was ETV pirating the signal, it was also editing out original commercials to replace them with local advertisements. Mr Wijesuriya said that BBC initially was very supportive of their programmes reaching Sri Lanka courtesy ETV, which had got its project approved by the regulators in Colombo on the basis that they were going into satellite transmissions. But as to whether they were going to pay the parties originating these transmissions was, to borrow the ETV promoter´s language, 'not mentioned'..ETV had gone through the appraisal process to set up shop, obtained the approval of the Director-General of Telecommunications to import transmitters, begun test transmissions with the necessary authority and was awaiting formal cabinet approval when lightning struck. The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, then in office, perceived the new station and its promoters to be unsympathetic to him and slammed the door on a project which already had had considerable investment made on it..'He regarded us as a Gamini Dissanayake station,' says Mr Wijesuriya. That explains a lot. Mr Wijesuriya had made his fortune hauling heavy equipment for the multi-purpose Mahaweli river diversion project that his friend, Mr Dissanayake, had promoted 15 years ago. Mr Dissanayake (and Lalith Athulathmudali) had unsuccessfully competed with Mr Premadasa for the ruling United National Party (UNP) ticket to succeed ageing President J.R. Jayewardene..Ensconced in the presidency, Mr Premadasa had commenced marginalising his rivals. Tragically, all three men who ran that race have since been assassinated—first Mr Athulathmudali, then Mr Premadasa and, finally, Mr Dissanayake. But ETV has survived and prospered thanks to what Mr Wijesuriya´s friends see as his genius and critics as his crookedness..What ETV was doing enraged a rival Sri Lankan station, MTV, even more than it did the BBC. MTV (no relation to its namesake music channel) had paid the BBC to beam a news broadcast under which the 1600 hours BBC news would be beamed at 1900 hours local time. Mr Wijesuriya says his ETV had an edge because it was bouncing off live the BBC´s satellite transmissions. He says, 'We were relaying BBC 24 hours and viewers here could have it no sooner it was beamed out of London..'The MTV owners protested and got BBC to write us a ´cease-and-desist´ letter. I went to court (in Colombo) and said they were impinging on our rights. By the third hearing it was agreed that the case be taken off the roll and we come to an agreement,' he adds..There has been a lot of angry noise but no agreement. Mr Wijesuriya argues that the Intellectual Property Act and the Broadcasting Law applicable to these matters in Sri Lanka were not being broken in any way. He says the BBC knew it was on a sticky wicket and only acted as they did because they were gingered up by the MTV owners. 'We are small enough for them to ignore. It´s just that the Maharajahs (then owners of MTV) warmed them up,' he said..Legal PiratesIn the two years he ran ETV, Mr Wijesuriya claims to have made SLR 24 million after depreciation. Some months ago, he sold off the station to a Lankan group at a tidy 400 percent profit. He claims that what he did was knock programming prices down for everybody. Says Wijesuriya: 'People who want to buy programmes from satellite operators are able to negotiate the prices down because they know they have an option.' That option, of course, is pirating..MTV´s Managing Director John Barton whose station has also been beaming BBC 24 hours of the day since 1 April (after paying for the rights) says that 50 percent of the television product now available in Sri Lanka is pirated by ETV. 'BBC is bought by us and ripped off by ETV,' he says matter-of-factly. Mr Barton recognises Mr Wijesuriya as an 'astute businessman who knows how to play the game down here'..He says ETV´s new owners seemed receptive to discontinuing practices pioneered by Mr Wijesuriya but admits that they would find it difficult to make money if they do. Industry sources said that MTV, which is losing money right now on its television activity but hopes for profits down the road, had also considered piracy. But the station´s owners say they wish to be strictly legitimate..The Colombo government has been making some noises about closing loopholes in the copyright laws to prevent piracy of foreign satellite transmissions. Trade Minister Kingsley Wickramaratne said recently the local copyright authority had been asked to study this matter but nothing has come of it. Media Minister Dharmasiri Senanayake is on record saying that amendments to the 1982 Intellectual Property Act are being contemplated..Mr Senanayake believes, as does Mr Wijesuriya, that the existing law does not protect satellite transmissions that can be picked up within the country. But Mr Barton disagrees with the contention that ETV is within the law in plucking signals without payment from satellites orbiting the earth. Why is that notion not being tested? 'Protecting television material (via copyright actions) is going to be a long and exhaustive process,' he says..In April this year, ETV obtained an enjoining order from the District Court of Colombo restraining MTV from interfering with ETV´s rights 'to transmit or telecast to viewers in Sri Lanka television programmes originating outside Sri Lanka and broadcast, re-broadcast, or beamed over and above the airspace of Sri Lanka not being the words of authors who are nationals and/or have their habitual residence in Sri Lanka and not being words first published in Sri Lanka'. etv also rushed to court when the media minister hinted that he might have to use his powers to cancel the station´s licence if they ignored the ministry´s warning not to go ahead with plans to telecast the Wills World Cup cricket in Sri Lanka..Rupavahini, one of the two state-owned stations, had paid a fortune for the exclusive television rights to the matches when ETV threw its hat into that ring. The court action was withdrawn on a state assurance that the minister would not cancel ETV´s licence without a proper inquiry..Nahil Wijesuriya, a 51-year-old self-made million aire, is a likeable guy. Stockily built with short-cropped hair, his eyes twinkle and he laughs easily. He likes the fun things of this world and revels at the chance of a ringside seat to excitement. He certainly had all that when he set up the zanily named Extra Terrestrial Vision, Sri Lanka´s fifth television station..ETV has bloomed by helping itself, free, gratis and for nothing, to BBC signals taken off satellites orbiting the earth. 'It is rather like this,' explains Mr Wijesuriya. 'If your neighbour´s mango tree overhangs your garden, you are free to take the fruit over your property. That is perfectly legitimate. You are not breaking any law. The BBC signal was plucked from the sovereign air space of Sri Lanka. We did not do anything illegal and despite a great deal of effort, nobody has been able to establish that we have.'.The BBC tolerated it for a while. But not only was ETV pirating the signal, it was also editing out original commercials to replace them with local advertisements. Mr Wijesuriya said that BBC initially was very supportive of their programmes reaching Sri Lanka courtesy ETV, which had got its project approved by the regulators in Colombo on the basis that they were going into satellite transmissions. But as to whether they were going to pay the parties originating these transmissions was, to borrow the ETV promoter´s language, 'not mentioned'..ETV had gone through the appraisal process to set up shop, obtained the approval of the Director-General of Telecommunications to import transmitters, begun test transmissions with the necessary authority and was awaiting formal cabinet approval when lightning struck. The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, then in office, perceived the new station and its promoters to be unsympathetic to him and slammed the door on a project which already had had considerable investment made on it..'He regarded us as a Gamini Dissanayake station,' says Mr Wijesuriya. That explains a lot. Mr Wijesuriya had made his fortune hauling heavy equipment for the multi-purpose Mahaweli river diversion project that his friend, Mr Dissanayake, had promoted 15 years ago. Mr Dissanayake (and Lalith Athulathmudali) had unsuccessfully competed with Mr Premadasa for the ruling United National Party (UNP) ticket to succeed ageing President J.R. Jayewardene..Ensconced in the presidency, Mr Premadasa had commenced marginalising his rivals. Tragically, all three men who ran that race have since been assassinated—first Mr Athulathmudali, then Mr Premadasa and, finally, Mr Dissanayake. But ETV has survived and prospered thanks to what Mr Wijesuriya´s friends see as his genius and critics as his crookedness.What ETV was doing enraged a rival Sri Lankan station, MTV, even more than it did the BBC. MTV (no relation to its namesake music channel) had paid the BBC to beam a news broadcast under which the 1600 hours BBC news would be beamed at 1900 hours local time. Mr Wijesuriya says his ETV had an edge because it was bouncing off live the BBC´s satellite transmissions. He says, 'We were relaying BBC 24 hours and viewers here could have it no sooner it was beamed out of London..'The MTV owners protested and got BBC to write us a ´cease-and-desist´ letter. I went to court (in Colombo) and said they were impinging on our rights. By the third hearing it was agreed that the case be taken off the roll and we come to an agreement,' he adds..There has been a lot of angry noise but no agreement. Mr Wijesuriya argues that the Intellectual Property Act and the Broadcasting Law applicable to these matters in Sri Lanka were not being broken in any way. He says the BBC knew it was on a sticky wicket and only acted as they did because they were gingered up by the MTV owners. 'We are small enough for them to ignore. It´s just that the Maharajahs (then owners of MTV) warmed them up,' he said..Lankan PanacheIs plucking satellite signals the ETV way a Sri Lanka exclusive? On this scale, yes, says john Barton of MTV. He said that as far as he knew it was being done by a small cable operator in India and also in Indonesia. But nowhere on the Sri Lankan scale and style. 'Sri Lanka´s international reputation is at stake,' he says..But the bottom line is that the government would not like to interfere with viewers in Sri Lanka getting for free programmes that would otherwise be unavailable to them because of high cost. The owners of these programmes now have also understood the available pirating option and, as Mr Wijesuriya says, that knowledge reflects on programme pricing for those who want to pay.