DOMINICANS RESPOND TO TELEVISION BROADCAST PIRACY

UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 000559

SIPDIS

STATE FOR EB - AADAMO
WHITE HOUSE PASS USTR FOR MALITO, PECK, SOUDER, VARGO

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ETRD KIPR EINV DR
SUBJECT: DOMINICANS RESPOND TO TELEVISION BROADCAST PIRACY
DEMARCHE WITH NEW DOCUMENTS ON EFFORTS TO STOP THE PROBLEM

REF: (A) STATE 17131 (B) SANTO DOMINGO 6415


1. Summary: During the Embassy's January 31 demarche on
television broadcast piracy (ref a),Under Secretary of
Industry and Commerce Marcelo Puello told DCM that his
Ministry took the requirement of stopping television
broadcast piracy seriously and had sent the report to USTR on
January 7 without informing the Embassy. The CAFTA-required
report on television broadcast piracy had been assigned to
the general director of ONAPI (National Office of Industrial
Property) Enrique Ramirez. After the meeting we received a
copy of the report which shows that the government is taking
new steps to monitor illegal broadcasts. It fails to mention
the recent favorable outcome of a long-running television
broadcast piracy case against major Dominican station
Telemicro. The Ambassador delivered the demarche separately
to President Fernandez and Foreign Minister Morales Troncoso,
who assured that they would study the issue. End summary.


2. During the January 31 demarche on television broadcast
piracy (ref a),Under Secretary of Industry and Commerce
Marcelo Puello and his Director for Commercial Treaties, Hugo
Rivera Santana, told the DCM that in December the Secretary
for Industry and Commerce had assigned the task of preparing
the report on television broadcast piracy to the general
director of ONAPI (National Office of Industrial Property)
Enrique Ramirez. The officials said that the Dominican
Government considered the CAFTA agreement as binding from the
day it was signed in August 2004. The government takes very
seriously the side letter to CAFTA which commits the
Dominicans to stop broadcast piracy and to regularly report
about their efforts to do so. The original Dominican plan
was for the National Office for Copyright Protection (ONDA)
to prepare the report, but ONDA failed to complete the task
(ref b). The Embassy had pushed ONDA for the report without
any results. The Embassy had also addressed the reporting
requirement with Under Secretary Puello, the Foreign
Ministry, the Attorney General's office and other government
agencies involved with the issue. This was the first notice
of the Dominicans' reassignment of responsibilities.


3. Puello said that FedEx had delivered the ONAPI report to
USTR on January 7. Ecopol received a copy for the first time
on February 1. After reviewing the documents, we can
understand why the they might have been overlooked after
arriving at USTR. The report is a compilation of Spanish
language documents with no cover identifying them as the
required broadcast piracy report.


4. The documents show that in December the Secretary of
Industry and Commerce took control of the reporting issue and
formally assigned to ONAPI the task of preparing the
broadcast piracy report. ONAPI approached agencies involved
in the effort against piracy to assess actions and then
reported back to the Secretary of Industry and Commerce.
ONAPI documents the fact that in November the Santo Domingo's
District Attorney's Office obtained a court order to monitor
and document broadcasts by Telemicro and Canal del Sol, two
large scale offenders. Both stations are known by the
Embassy to have continued making illegal broadcasts. The
information collected from monitoring should be of use in
future prosecutions.


5. An important item not reported in the documents forwarded
to USTR is the October 22, 2004, conviction of Channel 5
(Telemicro) for broadcast piracy in a combined civil and
criminal case filed in April 2002 . The court ordered
Telemicro to pay a total of RD$415,000 (about US$14,000) to
Twentieth Century Fox, Tristar Pictures, Columbia Pictures
and Warner Brothers. The court sentenced Telemicro,s
manager to three months in prison. Jaime Angeles, the MPAA's
Santo Domingo representative, appealed the judge,s refusal
to take Telemicro off the air.


6. The Ambassador raised the piracy issue with Foreign
Minister Morales Troncoso on January 31 and with President
Fernandez on February 2. The Ambassador stressed the urgency
for the Dominican Government to act with firmness to stop the
long running problem. The Ambassador reminded President
Fernandez that his public proposal to bolster the film
industry would not succeed unless IPR protections for films
are strengthened.
HERTELL