The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition, commends the Vietnamese court and local law enforcement for the conviction of the three operators of the illegal streaming websites bilutvt.net, tvhayh.org, and hlss.pro in a case in which various ACE members were complainants.

The People’s Court of Quang Binh Province sentenced the primary operator, Phan Ngoc Tuan, to 24 months in prison with a suspended sentence, 48 months of probation, and it confiscated 2,006,539,128 VND ($78,306 USD) to be allocated towards public funds.

The two supporting operators also were sentenced. One will serve 15 months in prison with a suspended sentence and 18 months of probation. The court confiscated 490,580,700 VND ($19,144 USD). The other was ordered to serve 9 months in prison with 18 months of probation. The court will confiscate 184,123,100 VND ($7,185 USD). All confiscated money will go toward public funds.

“Violations of intellectual property and copyrights, particularly those of foreign rights holders, disrupt business operations,” said Judge Nguyen Xuan Dieu, the Chief Judge of the Criminal Court of Quang Binh Provincial People’s Court. “This also negatively affects foreign investment in Vietnam. It affects the country’s reputation and violates international conventions on intellectual property, Vietnam’s intellectual property laws, the Penal Code, and other regulations,” he added.

“The Vietnamese criminal court and local law enforcement have issued a strong deterrence message in the successful prosecution of the operators in the BiluTV case,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the MPA. “Some of the world’s most widely accessed illegal streaming sites are based in Vietnam. While the conviction of the three defendants marks the second milestone this year in Vietnam’s fight to protect intellectual property, much more work remains to be done in this space and we look forward to ongoing collaboration with the Vietnamese justice system and future landmark convictions of criminal targets there.”

This article was first published on ACE