BELIZE CITY, Mon. Dec. 14, 2020– Back in June, Robert Reich and his company, the Channel Broadcasting Company (CBC), were the subjects of nationwide media coverage after they were found to be in legal trouble with Dish Network LLC.
Reports indicated that DISH, an American TV network provider based in Colorado, launched an investigation which revealed that CBC had been illegally advertising and selling access to their copyrighted network content on CBC’s website.
As a result, an injunction was brought against Reich to halt the selling of the copyrighted content, and a United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered an immediate freeze on CBC’s assets.
The affidavit issued by the court indicated that Reich had committed a multitude of breaches of the United States Code and would face charges for each breach.
Six months later, the courts have made their ruling, and have assigned a cost of US$750 for each of the 21,136 access credentials of CBC’s subscribers. This amounts to a total of US$15.8 million that is owed by Robert Reich to DISH LLC.
The settlement also mandates that CBC be permanently barred from the pirating and distribution of DISH’s signals.
On Friday, December 11, 2020, CBC released a statement which stated that they were pleased to have reached a settlement with DISH despite the large sum of money they now owe. That statement reads as follows:
“CBC is pleased to announce that it has reached a settlement of the legal dispute with DISH network LLC and Nagrastar LLC in the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida. That settlement requires that the terms remain strictly confidential. CBC looks forward to continue serving its customers and the public with top-quality cable and internet services.”
The bright spot for CBC and several other local cable providers is that HBO Latin America had signed an agreement with the Belize Cable Television Operators Association in April of 2019, allowing authorized network access to content from HBO, to be sold in Belize.
Whether or not the blow to CBC’s finances will have a direct effect on their daily operations, however, remains a question in their subscribers’ minds.