TV Piracy

Apparently it's fairly wide-spread (15% of users aren't paying). Anybody who's there know anything about it?

(Be careful not to incriminate yourself).

Ecuador losing out to pay-TV piracy
Juan Fernandez Gonzalez     | 19-05-2013

Ecuador loses around $20 million every year because of the use of illegal FTA receptors; during 2012, 150,000 pirated pay-TV antennas were registered in the country, according to Supertel, Ecuador's telecom authority.

The country recently began participation in Alianza, the Latin American organisation against piracy. During a recent Alianza presentation, Claudio Rosas, director of Supertel, pointed out that: “The use of pirated pay-TV was outlawed last year in article 325 of the Law of Intellectual Property.”

The new regulation includes penalties of up to two years in prison for people who import, store, sell or rent any kind of pirate decoder or antenna. Despite of the changes, in 2012 only 60 decoding boxes were confiscated in Ecuador, and the owners received fines from $657 to $6,750.

Most of the Latin American countries are working with Alianza, in which 16 big telecom groups are also represented. DirecTV, Claro, Telefonica, Televisa and Fox International are making a great effort to reduce the piracy. In Latin America, nearly 15% of pay-TV users are actually not paying for the service, according to a recent Business Bureau statistic.