By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A premier pay-TV content provider is demanding that the Bahamian government “takes action to stop the unlicensed transmission” of major US networks to subscribers in this nation.

HBO Latin America, a subsidiary of its Home Box Office (HBO) parent, is urging the Trump administration to “consider withdrawing or denying” the one-way trade preferences that the US grants to The Bahamas and other Caribbean nations to press for a region-wide crackdown on copyright and intellectual property rights violations.

The network, in a letter to the US Trade Representative’s Office that has just been publicly disclosed, argues that the online piracy of TV programmes and related content “has increased significantly in The Bahamas”.

Describing the use of illegal online platforms to download and watch such programming as “alarming”, HBO Latin America called on the Bahamian government to also crack down on IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) and illicit streaming devices (ISDs) that it says are facilitating these copyright violations.

“HBO Latin America is also requesting that the Bahamian government takes action to stop the unlicensed transmission of the US domestic network signals of CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, all of which are intended for the US market and contain content distributed on HBO Latin America programming services, often on an exclusive basis,” the letter charged.

“Online piracy of audiovisual materials has increased significantly in The Bahamas. Illegal IPTV services are openly advertised in public places and are widely advertised online. The increased use of illegal online platforms is alarming and causing significant disruption in the market.

“HBO Latin America would like to see action by the Bahamian government to help reduce the use of illegal online IPTV services and ISDs that facilitate access to unlicensed content.”

The HBO Latin America demands, conveyed by their attorneys, potentially impacts all the major US networks whose content is widely watched and enjoyed by a Bahamian audience that effectively takes access to them for granted - treating it almost as a right.

The letter, though, does not specify who is behind the alleged “unlicensed transmissions” in The Bahamas even though it singles out Caribbean cable TV providers in general earlier in HBO Latin America’s missive.

“Most, if not all, cable providers in the Caribbean (including all beneficiary countries) broadcast US networks (ABC, Fox, NBC and CBS) that are not licensed for broadcast in the Caribbean territory,” the letter said. “The cable providers illegally broadcast the signals in a variety of different ways and, of great concern, it appears that some of the companies engaging in this activity are US based.”

Cable Bahamas is not mentioned in the HBO Latin America letter, and there is no suggestion that the BISX-listed communications provider has done anything wrong in relation to the claims articulated. Tribune Business was unsuccessful in multiple repeated efforts to obtain comment from Cable Bahamas executives on the matter yesterday, including whether they were aware of the HBO Latin America concerns and if it had any impact for its operations.

Tribune Business reported in 2013 that Cable Bahamas and HBO had struck a commercial agreement for the former to use its signals and content, but the Latin American subsidiary’s latest letter singles out cable TV operators in Jamaica, Curacao, Guyana and St Kitts and Nevis as being guilty of transmitting the major US networks to their subscribers while lacking the necessary authorisations. Hotels were also identified as major culprits.

The letter was submitted to the US government’s leading trade negotiator as part of a public consultation agreement on the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) report that the Trump administration is due to release around year-end 2019. It argues that several nations are failing to meet the criteria for receiving the CBI’s trade preferences, although it does not state who, as a result of these alleged copyright violations.

Some $66.2m worth of Bahamian exports to the US benefited from CBI preferences and tax exemptions in 2018, a separate report released earlier this year by the US International Trade Commission (USITC) found. On average, around 18.4 percent of this nation’s US exports were covered by the CBI during 2017-2018, with Polymers International’s styrofoam products and crawfish among the main beneficiaries.

Thus maintaining access to the CBI’s benefits is not inconsequential for the Bahamian economy in light of HBO Latin America’s threats and lobbying of the Trump administration to use this as leverage to force better intellectual property rights protections and enforcement in The Bahamas and wider Caribbean.

The premier pay-TV network’s concerns also threaten to revive long-standing copyright issues between The Bahamas and the US that took decades, and four administrations, to resolve. The US Embassy’s intervention eventually ‘jump started’ negotiations between Cable Bahamas and various TV programming rights holders to achieve commercial agreements, after many of the latter declined to deal with The Bahamas on the basis it was too small a market to merit their interest.

In return, The Bahamas enacted amendments to its compulsory licensing regime - a long-standing demand of the US and its music/TV industries - which had allowed the downloading and rebroadcasting of signals to audiences in this nation regardless of whether agreements were in place to compensate the programming owners.

Yet this is not the first time HBO Latin America has blasted The Bahamas and sought the US government’s support to advance its cause. In 2013, it urged the US Trade Representative’s Office to place The Bahamas back on its Special 301 “blacklist” on the basis that this nation had yet to pay it compensation from the Copyright Royalties Fund for previous violations of its rights.

That matter, too, was cleared up, but HBO Latin America’s latest letter, dated August 29, 2019, said: “Unfortunately, unlicensed distribution of US copyrighted works has been commonplace in many countries in the Caribbean for decades.

“In too many of these countries, these infringing activities persist without any resistance, much less deterrent penalties that would force infringers to cease operations. More specifically, a number of parties in these regions - usually local broadcasters and cable operators - engage in the broadcasting, cablecasting and/or simulcasting of television programming without licenses from, and without compensation to, rights holders like HBO Latin America.

“Often these unauthorised parties are the only distributor of television programming in the territory. Some of them operate under franchises granted by national governments. In some instances, the broadcasters or cable operators may either be government-owned, or have strong local political connections, making it difficult for foreign companies, like HBO Latin America, to compel enforcement authorities to act against unauthorised distributors.”