Next week is intellectual property rights week - and while that might sound like just another perfunctory observance, this year there is some urgency to it. And that's because the enforcement of intellectual property rights is about to bring sweeping change to what you watch on cable television.
The Government of Belize and cable operators are under serious pressure to put an end to the signal piracy which fills up your cable lineup with 200 plus channels. That means two things: they'll have to pull a lot of channels, plus your cable bill will be going up, because the channels they offer will now have to be legitimately bought from the rights holders, no more piracy.
As we've reported, HBO executives recently came to Belize and met with the Belize Cable Television Operators Association. They demanded that the Cable operators pull their channels which include HBO, HBO Family, HBO Signature, Cinemax and others including SHOWTIME, Encore and Starz.
The cable operators got them to ease off that hardline, but starting soon, possibly as early as May, they will have to start paying premium prices for those channels - and a portion of those costs are expected to be passed unto consumers.
So, long story short, in a few months you're going to be getting fewer cable channels - and you're going to have pay more for it. It's the reality of a changing global trade landscape where the United States is demanding copyright compliance and respect for intellectual property rights of content creators. Back in January, attorney and IP expert Marissa Longsworth appeared on the "Know Your Rights" show to discuss the regional and global realities:
Marissa Longsworth - Attorney & IP Specialist
"It's become an international trade issue because the United States has actually cited Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad as infringing on the rights of their content creators particularly through one cable company. Belize is also cited in some reports for not complying with copyright as it relates to signal piracy and so on. So the truth is we are not supposed to have these channels at the cost that we have them. In any other country in the world the expectation is that you pay for licenses from those programmers to use and distribute their content. So for example HBO being a premium channel that doesn't advertise makes it money from subscribership, not from advertisements and so they depend on having subscribership through cable operators and so on that help to pay their bills. So HBO will be one of the first ones here like they did in Jamaica, they were the first ones in Jamaica. Essentially what is going to happen is there will come a day when the crackdown happens in Belize."
Well, that day is here and the crackdown is on. Things have progressed very quickly in the last few months, and now, enforced copyright compliance is expected to start coming into effect by mid-year.
For context we note that for the 30+ years since cable TV arrived in Belize, cable operators have been pirating all but a handful of signals and, as a result, Belizeans have been receiving probably the cheapest, most premium cable package on earth. Tonight, the news is that's pretty much over, "free paypa bun", and the coming weeks will tell us what the new configuration will be.
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