Company takes a legal action; court orders raid at operator’s premises
June 14, 2006: International Cable TV Network, one of the prominent cable operators in city of Udipi in Karnataka has been caught red-handed for pirating signals of channels from Zee Turner bouquet. The operator had been pilfering some channels of Zee Turner bouquet for last three months thereby causing huge financial losses to the company.
On obtaining the information and evidences of illegal usage of its’ channel signals, Zee Turner filed a case of piracy and unfair trade practices in Delhi High Court against the operator on June 1, 2006. Honorable Delhi High Court ordered a raid at operator’s premises and appointed a court commissioner for conducting the raid.
Accordingly, Mr. K.K. Sharma, the court commissioner, with the help of local police and Zee Turner representatives conducted a civil raid at International Cable TV Network’s control room in Malpe Beach. While conducting the raid, Court Commissioner found enough evidences of piracy and pilferage of Zee Turner channels. Besides other evidences, the court commissioner also found pirated IRD Boxes that were being used to illegally distribute the signals by the operator.
Those pirated IRD boxes as being used for illegal transmission of Zee Turner channels were seized and sealed by the court commissioner.
International Cable TV Network was an authorized cable operator of Zee Turner until December 21, 2005. However, arrangement between the two was terminated on December 22, 2005 due to violation of the terms of the agreement with Zee Turner and the company switched off the signals of International cable TV Network. However, International Cable TV Network thereafter started using pirated boxes to illegitimately distribute and display the channels from Zee Turner bouquet to its customers.
Speaking on the issue, Mr. Arun Poddar, CEO Zee Turner said, “We at Zee Turner will not allow any sort of unfair trade practices and piracy of our signals and an aggressive action will be taken against any operator indulging in such practices.”
About Zee-Turner
With 14 regional offices a countrywide network of over 400 dealers, Zee-Turner has the maximum depth and width of distribution in the country. Headquartered in New Delhi, Zee-Turner was incorporated in February 2002, when the two media giants – Zee Telefilms & Turner International India Pvt. Ltd. - joined hands to form a distribution joint venture. Zee-Turner manages distribution and trade marketing for Zee, Turner as well as third party channels such as CNBC and Reality TV, in India and Nepal.
Zee-Turner's comprehensive bouquet already comprises of 26 channels catering to every genre and age, and offering quality national and international content at a very competitive pricing. Some of these include the flagship channels Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee News, Zee Café, Zee Trendz, HBO,CNBC, CNN International, POGO, Cartoon Network, and the regional Zee channels, among others.
