With the continued growth of pirate IPTV services in recent years, TV broadcasters and distributors have been ramping up their anti-piracy efforts.

The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) has been particularly active. It’s also the main driver behind a new lawsuit filed yesterday by DISH Network at a New York federal court.

Dish Sues Pirate IPTV Operation

The American pay-TV provider accuses Moroccan resident Idriss Elkasmi and various unnamed defendants of running the IPTV operation, using various brands, including DMTN IPTV, Idriss Premium TV and Manx TV.

These services allegedly offered access to thousands of live channels and up to 100,000 movies and series on demand.

In addition, the complaint names Ali Ezzaary and various John Does as co-defendants. They allegedly promoted and enabled access to the pirate IPTV services as secondary infringers by collecting payments, among other things.

Dish has been aware of the IPTV services for years already and repeatedly issued takedown notices, hoping to stop the infringing activity. However, that didn’t yield the desired result, after which Dish decided to take legal action.

“Even after receiving 68 cease-and-desist notices from DISH between 2021 and 2026, Elkasmi and the other Defendants have defiantly continued to operate the Infringing Service, willfully infringing DISH’s copyrights on a massive scale with actual knowledge that their activities are unlawful,” the complaint reads.

Leather Backpack & Breaking Bad

According to the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), which coordinates the legal action on behalf of Dish, the operators also used various deceptive tactics to hide the nature of their operation.

When an undercover Dish investigator purchased an IPTV subscription, Elkasmi’s WhatsApp account sent instructions to send the payment to another business called “Genuine Leather”.

When finalized, the investigator received a receipt falsely stating the purchase was for a “Philos Brown Leather BackPack.” Soon after, the same investigator received working credentials to access the pirate IPTV service.

As DISH’s investigative activity intensified ahead of filing, Elkasmi allegedly took additional steps to obscure his identity. He took down his LinkedIn profile and replaced his Facebook profile photo with an image of someone else entirely.

“The new photo used by Defendant Elkasmi is in fact an image of a famous Hollywood director named Vince Gilligan, who gained notoriety as the creator of a popular television show called ‘Breaking Bad,’ as well as its spinoff, ‘Better Call Saul.’ The same image appears on Mr. Gilligan’s IMDB page,” the complaint reads.

“There is no indication that Mr. Gilligan has any connection whatsoever to Defendant Elkasmi or the Infringing Service,” the complaint adds.

$21 Million & a Broad Injunction

The lawsuit mentions that at least 145 registered copyrighted works were infringed, and DISH seeks the maximum of $150,000 in statutory copyright infringement damages for each, totaling over $21 million.

Beyond the multi-million damages figure, DISH requests a permanent injunction and the transfer of domains including dmtn4k.com, dmtn-tv.net, and dmtn8k.com. In addition, it would like the injunction to cover third parties enabling the service. That includes hosting providers, CDNs, ISPs, and payment processors.

IBCAP executive director Chris Kuelling said the organization expects the case to follow the pattern of previous successful actions. In addition to a victory in court, he hopes that intermediaries, ranging from payment providers to CDNs, will help to keep the IPTV services offline.

“In line with past lawsuit wins, we expect a similar outcome in this case, including a broad injunction that can be enforced against third parties, such as hosting providers, CDNs, ISPs, and payment processors, to stop this infringement,” Kuelling said.

The involvement of third-party intermediaries could be key, as the Moroccan defendants have not been very responsive thus far. They allegedly ignored previous takedown requests from rightsholders in the past, so there’s a realistic chance that they will not appear in court either.

As of the filing date, dmtn8k.com and dmtniptv.net remain active, and these services continue to operate.

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A copy of the complaint filed by Dish Network at the Southern District of New York is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.