Sentech's Stance on the Piracy Problem

The entire Direct – to –Home (DTH) and Pay-TV signal distribution industry (not just Sentech) has to contend and deal with the universal piracy problem that comes with the territory on an ongoing basis.  Sentech has always used encryption on our satellite platforms to secure programming content. 
 
Sentech has been and is always vigilant about the security of the service and we take the hacking of encryption very seriously. . Like all signal distributors around the world, we use both technical and legal means to try and combat piracy. 

The Vivid service is available in the Sub-Saharan Africa for viewers who have purchased the Vivid decoders. The Vivid platform is carried by satellite and as such the broadcast footprint extends into Sub-Saharan Africa.

Historically, the encryption software used in the Vivid decoder protected the geographic integrity of the broadcasters’ offerings outside of the South African borders.  Hackers are also vigilant as evidenced in ongoing Internet banking phishing.

On the technical side, we do over-the-air technical updates designed to disable pirate devices and at times major Conditional Access (CA) system upgrades are necessary to keep ahead of the game. We are currently busy with such a major upgrade involving upgrading of all CA systems including smart card security as well as Set Top Boxes (STBs).   As a result thereof, we can confirm that e.tv is temporarily unavailable on Sentech’s Vivid DTH satellite service.  While this new technology is state of the art today, our vendors are well aware that the pirates are starting to study these new security technologies to find ways to attack them and it will only be a matter of time until new attacks are successful and the cycle begins over again.
 
On the other hand we also enlist the services of the legal experts to combat piracy.  We have even employed private investigators and together with our reputable Intellectual Property Attorneys began a sting operation in order to get to the source of the piracy.   We are continually in communication with the South African Police Services Commercial branch that has all the relevant details of our findings.  Ongoing SAPS investigations have resulted in the closure of one of the major distributors selling pirate decoders. The investigations are cumbersome and can be expensive as the syndicate is international.
 

In terms of the question relating to SABC content specifically; only SABC News International is expected to be received in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa by any satellite decoder.  No other SABC services can reach Europe or America on a Sentech satellite transmission. The encryption is not even a factor here as the footprints for the other SABC services do not reach beyond Southern Africa for Ku-band and Sub-Saharan Africa for C-band.

We are not aware of any threatened legal action in respect of the signal carried on behalf of the SABC.

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