London, 22 February 2002

PRESS RELEASE

During the meeting of the Board of Directors held in London on 22nd February 2002, hosted by BSkyB and NDS, AEPOC (European Association for the Protection of Encrypted Works and Services) highlighted the importance of strengthening the power of Europol in order that it may carry out a strong action to resist cyber-crime in the audiovisual sector.

AEPOC has always been in the front line to support any initiative at European level with regard to technological measures.

The Secretary General has revealed the programme of a training course to be addressed to the Police Bodies and to the other relevant authorities of the European Union and of the accession countries. This course deals with piracy against conditional access systems and fraudulent reception of encrypted signals. It is based on technical, commercial and investigative experiences collected by the AEPOC Members in the last very active years of anti-piracy effort.

Europe needs to witness the setting up of a special department inside Europol with special technical resources and tools for investigation in order to resist criminal activity. It is also necessary to stimulate the co-operation between national authorities, and in particular between the Police Forces operating in the various countries, the TLC operators and players who know the relevant field better than any others.

AEPOC, with the position paper recently submitted to the European Commission, has again proposed such an initiative concerning the setting up of a specific working group at Europol, bringing together technical, judicial and investigative expertise.

Consequently, AEPOC is going to support the Spanish Presidency trend with regard to the measures to be adopted in order to make the Information Society environment safer, and is going to strongly support the proposal to establish an "Alert and Technological Research Centre" within the framework of Europol.

The next AEPOC meeting will be held in Madrid during June and the Europol issue will be the main matter discussed. It is part of the strategy of the Association to aim at the creation of a transnational effort and to lobby in connection with any problem and any possible innovative root against audiovisual piracy.