DISH, for years, has been a leader in going after owners of illegal IPTV services that sell live TV for a fraction of the cost. Now DISH has won again, and this time against Advanced TV Network.
ATN, like other IPTV services, claimed to be legal but received its contents illegally. The service was reportedly profitable as it brought in $7 million in sales annually in 2013.
After being shut down once, the ATN IPTV relaunched as it tried to use overseas services to avoid DISH and other legal troubles, in 2020 DISH again filed a lawsuit to go over the company ALFA TV Inc. the parent company behind ATN.
Originally DISH wanted $16+ million in damages but an attempted bankruptcy attempted allowed DISH to get more. Now a federal bankruptcy court has ordered the owners to pay $32,100,000 in damages for “willful copyright infringement” to DISH according to Cablefax.
DISH and others have been on a warpath against so-called IPTV services. They want to shut down as many cheap illegal live TV services as they can. The hope is to make it harder to find these services and scare others who are thinking of launching them into rethinking their plans.