A group of streaming services and studios are taking legal aim at Setvnow, a subscription video service based in Florida that, they claim, is selling a package of TV channels, movies and other content illegally.

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court Central District of California, Western Division, comes way of a group that includes, Amazon, Netflix, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios, Universal and Warner Bros., over allegations that Setvnow is pirating content and “inducing mass infringement” of copyrighted material by packaging it into a service that could look legitimate to the untrained eye.

The service being targeted, called Set TV, is offering a lineup of more than 500 channels that starts at $20 per month (for up to three devices per account) via an app for Android TV boxes, Android phones, Amazon Fire TV devices and browsers. Set TV has also set up a way to deliver service using Kodi add-ons.

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Set TV’s basic package of hundreds of channels includes BBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, CBS, HBO, Nickelodeon, A&E, Bravo, MTV, NBA TV, ESPN, among many others. In addition to selling the basic package on a month to month basis, Set TV is also selling discounted three-month, six-month and 12-month subscriptions.

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Set TV, which also sells a pre-loaded, internet-connected TV device for $89 that runs its service (called the SP-110), notes on its web site that it’s selling the service worldwide to anyone with an internet connection. In addition to selling the service directly, Set TV has also set up a reseller and affiliate program.

However, the plaintiffs claim that Setvnow is obtaining content and distributing it illegally.

“For the customers who use Setvnow, the service provides hallmarks of using authorized streaming services—a user-friendly interface and reliable access to popular content—but with a notable exception: the customers only pay money to Defendants, not to Plaintiffs and other content creators upon whose copyrighted works Defendants’ business depends,” the suit contends.

Setvnow has been asked for comment.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition that identifies and coordinates strategies against alleged content pirates on behalf of partners that include the SVOD services and studios, said it filed the suit against the service and two individuals, Jason Labossiere, said to be the site operator and domain registrant of www.setvnow.com, and Nelson Johnson, a partner in Set Broadcast LLC.

ACE has also gone after other services it believes to be accessing and distributing content illegally, including TickBox (a preliminary injunction was handed down in mid-February) and Dragon Box that, ACE claims, used software tools to “scour the internet” for sources of infringing content and assembling them into illegal, paid video services.

ACE and its backers have been on the legal offensive amid a growing threat from a new class of video pirates that have become increasingly sophisticated via the use of fancy interfaces along with customer service infrastructures that help these illegal services appear legitimate to consumers.

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“The technology makes the presentation of these pirate sites look pretty slick and, maybe to the untrained eye, seem halfway legitimate,” James Assey, executive vice president at the NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, said in an interview for a Multichannel News feature story on the topic.

“This is a whole new source of content,” noted Jan van Voorn, executive vice president and chief of global content protection at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). “Just going after the box sellers is not going to impact this whole range of players in this field.”

“It can be used anywhere in the world that has reasonable broadband penetration and speed,” Mark Mulready, vice president of cybersecurity services at Irdeto, said. “It’s a significant and growing threat.” 

The Copyright Alert System, a voluntary program started in February 2013 that involved several major ISPs such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, has come to an end.

Though the formal program is ending, parties that have been involved with the CAS program remain committed to “voluntary and cooperative efforts,” the Center for Copyright Information said in a statement released Friday:

“After four years of extensive consumer education and engagement, the Copyright Alert System will conclude its work. The program demonstrated that real progress is possible when content creators, Internet innovators and consumer advocates come together in a collaborative and consensus-driven process. CAS succeeded in educating many people about the availability of legal content, as well as about issues associated with online infringement. We want to thank everyone who put in the hard work to develop this program and make it a success, including past and present members of our Advisory Board. While this particular program is ending, the parties remain committed to voluntary and cooperative efforts to address these issues.”

CCI did not say why it was shuttering the effort but skeptics had questioned how effective the Copyright Alert System could be in curbing piracy, partly because it was limited to monitoring peer-to-peer applications, B&C reported.

The MPAA told Variety that the system managed to stop a “significant number” of users from accessing pirated content, but that “a persistent group of hard-core, repeat infringers are unlikely to change their behavior.”

But the CAS wasn’t really tailored to target that hard-core group.

Aimed at educating consumers and curb digital piracy, the program used a graduated “six strikes” approach what, at first, warned offenders that illegal file-sharing and copyright-infringement activity had been detected on their accounts, before more punitive action was taken. Depending on the ISP, that could include throttling of the user’s Internet connection and temporary suspension of the user accounts until the customer contacted the ISP.

“Termination is at one end of the spectrum, and it’s something we are not doing,” CCI executive director Jill Lesser told Multichannel News for the magazine’s cover issue for Feb. 10, 2013. “It’s not clear that saying, ‘If you do this again, we’re going to shut of your Internet access,’ is a deterrent.”

In that same story, Gigi Sohn, then the president and CEO of Public Knowledge president and a member of CCI’s advisory board (and, more recently, the former counsel for external affairs for past FCC chairman Tom Wheeler) stressed that the CAS will “start a conversation among casual file sharers…It’s not about stopping the hardcore uploader/downloader.”

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The CAS issued 1.3 million alerts in its first 10 months, with only 265 challenges and no findings of “false positives.”

While major ISPs came up with the six-strikes approach, the American Cable Association said last year that its members were strained by keeping up with the flood of alerts alleging that their customers were accessing content illegally.

--John Eggerton contributed to this story

About 39% of respondents to a recent survey said that they don’t care about the financial damage that video piracy inflicts on studios and other segments of the media industry.

And a sizable portion – about 32% -- of consumers admitted that they watch pirated content, according to a survey of 1,190 U.S. adults by YouGov that was commissioned by security specialist Irdeto.

Per the study, just 19% said the financial damage caused by piracy would stop them from watching purloined content altogether.

The study also found that 69% believe that streaming or downloading pirate content is illegal, meaning that a 31% think it’s totally above board.

Those findings, of course, are good for Irdeto, which believes that they indicate that content owners, movie studios and service providers should invest in additional content protection strategies to prevent pirates from stealing shows and movies and cutting into their legitimate businesses. Irdeto also believes that these issues cut even deeper.

“The negative impact that piracy has on the content creation industry extends much further than lost revenue,” Lawrence Low, VP of business development and sales at Irdeto, said in a statement. “Piracy deters content creators from investing in new content, impacting the creative process and providing consumers with less choice. It is becoming increasingly important for operators and movie studios to educate consumers on the tactics employed by pirates and to further promote innovative offerings that allow consumers to legally acquire content.”

Among other findings, 24% of consumers who watch pirated content are most interested in watching TV series, while the same percentage were most interested in prirated movies that are currently showing in theaters.

According to TorrentFreak, a site focused on file-sharing and privacy and copyright issues, HBO’s Game of Thrones was again the most-torrented TV show. Deadpool, it said, was the most pirated movie of 2016, ahead of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The Irdeto/YouGov study also found that consumers are likewise interested in pirating DVD and Blu-ray movies (18%), live sports (10%), and originals from OTT services such as Netflix and Hulu (9%). 

The official end of the fall-winter television season typically leads to a quieter, lighter summer for the industry. Thus far this year, though, events outside of the normal day-to-day business of TV have been anything but normal, and a couple of recent industry-related stories are already beginning to forecast what could be a very interesting and unusually busy summer in the world of television.

The presidential primary season has delivered its share of crazy twists and turns and unlikely scenarios that have driven ratings up for virtually all cable news networks. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger or more unpredictable, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders contemplated debating each other in a very high-profile event.

Hoping to get in on the action, boxing promoter Bob Arum looked to bring the spectacle to pay-per-view. Arum’s Top Rank event promotion company was willing to put up a minimum of $20 million — as well as donate 80% of the net proceeds from “The Heavyweight Debate” between the two presidential hopefuls to a charity or charities of the candidates’ choice — in an effort to promote the show.

Trump ultimately backed out of the proposed debate prior to Memorial Day weekend, but given his penchant for creating media spectacles, can anyone rule out a potentially big, politically-themed PPV event before voters head to the polls in November?

Meanwhile, HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of the most digitally pirated shows on cable, but recently the pay TV service has taken its GoT digital piracy fight to the world of online pornography.

HBO is trying to curtail the uploading of titillating, nudity-laced scenes from its fantasy series to the adult Web service PornHub, according to published reports.

PornHub itself released audience figures that show site searches for GoT scenes and related adult parodies were up 370% on the site in the days prior to the show’s April 24 season six premiere, but the site’s traffic actually drops 4% during a Game of Thrones episode.

For its part, HBO has said in a statement that it is “aware of the issue and is in the process of getting material taken down from PornHub,” according to Business Insider.

Even the world of sports TV isn’t immune to the potential effects of unforeseen developments. The New York Daily News reported last week that some NBC employees are refusing to travel to Brazil to work on NBCUniversal’s massive coverage of the Summer Olympics this August for fears of contracting the dangerous, mosquito-borne Zika virus.

Brazil is struggling to control the spread of the virus, which has been linked to birth defects in children of pregnant women contracting the disease. NBC is expected to send more than 2,000 staffers to Brazil to oversee the company’s unprecedented linear and digital coverage of the games.

An NBC spokesperson told The Daily News that “the safety of our team members is always our first priority,” and that “no NBC personnel assigned to work in Rio will be required to travel if they believe that their personal health or safety is at risk.”

Fasten your seat belts. It could be a bumpy, unconventional summer in TV land.

With Halloween just around the corner and consumers increasingly likely to tee up some scary movies and TV shows to amplify the mood, digital security specialist Irdeto took a look at what titles from the horror genre are most attractive to pirates.

AMC’s The Walking Dead has the dubious honor of being the most pirated TV show in the field, generating 44% of total TV downloads, Irdeto said in its report, based on its tracking of BitTorrent and OTT piracy traffic from October 14-23.

Following The Walking Dead was FX’s American Horror Story (28%), Showtime’s Dexter (10%), NBC’s Grimm (9%), The CW’s iZombie (7%) and Netflix original  Hemlock Grove (2%).

But zombies didn’t lead the way by piracy category. Ghost-themes titles (54%) led, then came zombies (27%) and slasher movies and TV shows (18%).

On the movie side of the digital piracy ledger, Insidious (16% of horror-genre downloads) was tops, Poltergeist (10%), The Shining (9%), 28 Days Later, Hotel Transylvania, The Exorcist, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, and Paranormal Activity.

Oh, and Irdeto did all of this with a message in mind for pay TV and OTT service providers– this data can help them put forth content that consumers are seeking during this frightening period, and perhaps put a damper on piracy.

 “As scary as this sounds, piracy data can help pay TV and OTT operators understand what their customers demand and may not have legal and affordable access to,” said Rory O’Connor, VP, services at Irdeto, in a statement.  “By looking at spikes in piracy, you can determine the most advantageous content, timing and format for your video service offerings in specific markets. For instance, consumers in the United States gravitate to older horror flicks that generate nostalgia around Halloween. It is quite possible for older video content to rise from the dead during key points of the year.”

O’Connor also reasons that Hemlock Grove isn’t a big target for piracy due to Netflix’s binge-friendly approach of releasing all episodes in a season at once.