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NDS accuses Canal+ of piracy
Thursday, March 14 2002
by The Register


Pay TV company Canal+ says that the Rupert Murdoch controlled company NDS has
placed encryption-cracking information on a Web site.











A row has broken out among pay TV companies after Canal+ alleged in a lawsuit
that rival NDS arranged for the posting of information on how to crack the
encryption used in its digital TV smartcards on a pirate Web site, writes John
Leyden. 



Canal+ alleges that NDS Group, which is majority owned by Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation, deliberately broke and distributed its set-top smart-card code. It
claims losses of USD1 billion since 1999, when the information was first posted
on DR7.com, and arises from a well-funded research effort by NDS into how to
crack Canal+ codes. 



A complaint filed in the US District Court for Northern California alleges that
NDS was behind "a conspiracy to harm Canal Plus' competitive position in the
digital television market", Newsbytes reports. 



NDS has angrily dismissed the allegation that it has ever promoted TV piracy,
branding the lawsuit filed against it by Canal+ as "outrageous and baseless".
It said that it intends to file countersuit against Canal+. 



"The problem is due solely to the inferior nature of Canal Plus' conditional
access technology, the failure of its business plan to contain measures to
protect against piracy and its failure to deal with piracy once it began," said
Abe Peled, chief executive officer of NDS, in a statement. 



"The clear evidence is that the pirate community targeted Canal+ early in 1998
and succeeded without the help of anyone, particularly NDS," he added. 





The Register and its contents are
copyright 2002 Situation Publishing. Reprinted with permission.