About

Fox International was the first company in Latin America’s Pay TV industry to set up a legal department with the sole purpose of fighting against piracy and illegal cable connections. The function was established in 2013 by Chile based lawyer Daniel Steinmetz and started covering Central America a year later with the hiring of Virginia Servent, who now heads the antipiracy department for Mexico, Central America and Dominican Republic from the Guatemala offices. The team’s main highlight from the past two years, has been its evolved approach in dealing with piracy, by going after local pirates and turning them into legal affiliates. ‘We suggest amendments to affiliate agreements to have more precise information from our affiliates, we propose settlement protocols not just to turn the pirate into our client but we are making them pay for the services they rendered without authorisation, we propose to sign promissory notes to reduce delinquency’, Servent elaborates. The increasing prevalence of internet protocol television (IPTV) devices and online piracy in Central America has recently presented a significant challenge for Fox and its antipiracy team. To effectively tackle this issue, Servent and her colleagues have worked tirelessly to push new technologies that help Fox control its contents. The team has also assisted authorities in finding ways to attack these new methods of piracy, and has been actively involved in working on piracy awareness campaigns on the internet.