Two media executives arrested for breaching copyright on Thai TV content

Two top executives of a media company are being detained by Department of Special Investigation (DSI) officers for alleged copyright infringements, related to the recording and rebroadcast (streaming) of several Thai Army-run TV Channel 7 programs via to Thai customers abroad, causing losses to the television station estimated at about 2.8 billion baht.


DSI officials are looking for six more suspects who remain at large.


According to the DSI, the media company, Doo TV Media, recorded and streamed, without the rights to do so, 592 Channel 7 programs, ranging from soap operas and variety shows to series and news, from 2015-2018 to its Thai customers overseas.


The company charged its customers US$14 per month and had set up branch offices in the United States and Britain, where there are a large number of Thai nationals. The pirated TV programs were streamed via the www.dootv.com and www.thaiflix.com websites.


The DSI did not name the two executives in custody, but said that they are experienced computer programmers, adding that the pirated programs were sent to the company’s server in Britain for streaming.


Thai viewers were blocked from seeing the pirated programs and the programmers kept changing the websites to avoid detection by the copyright owner which, in this case, is Channel 7.

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