Raid Takes Down Web Site; DIRECTV Also to Seek Contempt Citation
EL SEGUNDO, Calif.,July 12, 2005 – DIRECTV (NYSE:DTV) has filed a lawsuit in a Canadian court against a well known signal thief who flouted a permanent injunction order imposed last year to stop selling piracy technology used to steal DIRECTV programming.
The complaint alleges that Elio Gino D’Amario, of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has continued to sell pirate devices on his Web site in violation of a permanent injunction entered against him in a U.S. District Court and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in July 2004. The complaint against D’Amario was the result of an investigation conducted by the DIRECTV Office of Signal Integrity.
D’Amario was identified in 1999 as operating a network of companies and Web sites engaged in selling DIRECTV satellite piracy technology to customers in both the United States and Canada and has been the subject of several injunctions beginning in 2002.
DIRECTV is also seeking a contempt order against D’Amario based on his flagrant breach of the permanent injunction granted by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2004.
Contempt of such orders can have serious consequences. In a case last month, Billy Boudreau, a Canadian citizen who was operating a pirate Web site, was sentenced to nine months in prison after the judge found him in contempt for breaching an Anton Piller order, which provides for the right to search premises without prior warning and is used to prevent the destruction of incriminating evidence.
