Interview: AAPA’s Sheila Cassells on Counterfeit Devices and Live Event Piracy

The ongoing challenges presented by illicit streaming and the disappointments of the recent EU Digital Services Act are among the issues currently concerning AAPA Executive VP Sheila Cassells, writes David Davies.

Prior to joining the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) in 2011, Sheila Cassells was a member of Sky’s top 100 leadership team and the senior executive responsible for a broad range of EU policy matters, including technology spectrum, copyright, content, piracy, the environment, taxation and employment.

As she revealed in this interview, Cassells plans to step down from her role as AAPA Executive Vice-President at the end of this year. But before that, she shared her views on the most significant current piracy challenges to content creators, the AAPA’s ongoing cooperation with organisations including Europol and INTERPOL, and the notable omissions in the EU’s recent Digital Services Act.

How would you characterise the current severity of audio-visual piracy worldwide, and could the problem be said to have become markedly worse during the past few years?

Piracy continues to cause considerable harm to...

Latest Executive interview
 “Deepfakes are so dangerous because they risk polluting the entire information ecosystem and eroding people’s notion of trust”

ITN: Fighting to keep trust in news

News organisations face an increasing arms race against AI companies to protect the authenticity of the content reaching audiences through their channels. AI-powered deepfake content risks polluting the entire information ecosystem, says ITN’s Tami Hoffman, “What happens when people just don’t believe what they see?” Adrian Pennington finds out.

Read more

Merging Sky and NBCUniversal: Engineering culture and collaboration across continents

Integrating the engineering teams from three broadcast giants taught Mansoor Fazil, Director of Global Platform Engineering at Sky that international merging meant acknowledging cultural differences and staying ahead of consumer habits. Fazil spoke to IBC365 to share insights into Sky's cloud-first, hybrid approach and its focus on emerging technologies which will create expansion – at scale and even further afield geographically – to meet their future goals.

Read more
Favourites:

Registered users only: Login

Share this:
Other themes: