Dish Sues New York Stores For Selling Pirate Streaming Boxes

American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network is continuing its legal battles against alleged pirate streaming services.

The company previously filed a lawsuit against the people behind TVAddons and the ZemTV Kodi addon, but it’s fighting on more fronts too.

The largest success thus far was its case against “Shava TV,” which was filed back in 2015. Last year this resulted in a $25,650,000 judgment in favor of Dish, but that didn’t mean that the problems were over.

Shava TV reportedly continued its business and despite a contempt order against the operators, as well as several domain seizures, the boxes are still widely available. Not just on the Internet, but also in bricks-and-mortar stores.

This prompted Dish to file a new lawsuit at a federal court in New York this week. This time, the company is targeting several dealers located in New York, as well as a distributor.

The complaint lists the New York stores “ABC Wireless NYC,” and “ Family Phone” and accuses these of selling infringing Shava TV boxes. Goyal Group is accused of selling and distributing the boxes to various dealers.

“DISH sues for contributory copyright infringement because Defendants knew that Shava TV set-top boxes and service plans were providing access to television channels exclusively licensed to DISH and materially contributed to direct copyright infringement by Shava and persons purchasing Shava TV set-top boxes and services from Defendants,” the filing reads.

According to Dish, the defendants continued to sell and promote Shava TV despite multiple demands to cease the activity. This, despite the fact that a contempt order issued in the original Shava TV case specifically forbids them from doing so.

The contempt order, issued in February by US District Court Judge Thomas Ellis, enjoined several US dealers of Shava TV from engaging in infringing activities.

Dish notified the defendants

“Defendants actually know that the retransmission of the Protected Channels on the Shava TV service infringes DISH’s copyrights. Defendants disregarded DISH’s written demands […] and the Contempt Order, and are continuing to distribute, sell, and promote Shava TV set-top boxes and services,” the complaint reads.

“Defendants did not acknowledge or respond to any of these written demands or the court orders, nor did they take any action to comply.”

The broadcast provider argues that the stores and the distributor are liable for contributory copyright infringement. Dish asks the court to issue an injunction to stop the infringing activity and requests statutory damages to compensate its losses.

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A copy of Dish Network’s complaint against Goyal Group, Family Phone, ABC 1 NYC and ABC Wireless is available here (pdf).

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