US embassy cable - 05SANTODOMINGO559

UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 000559 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EB - AADAMO 
WHITE HOUSE PASS USTR FOR MALITO, PECK, SOUDER, VARGO 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ETRD, KIPR, EINV, DR 
SUBJECT: DOMINICANS RESPOND TO TELEVISION BROADCAST PIRACY 
DEMARCHE WITH NEW DOCUMENTS ON EFFORTS TO STOP THE PROBLEM 
 
REF: (A) STATE 17131 (B) SANTO DOMINGO 6415 
 
1.  Summary:  During the Embassy's January 31 demarche on 
television broadcast piracy (ref a), Under Secretary of 
Industry and Commerce Marcelo Puello told DCM that his 
Ministry took the requirement of stopping television 
broadcast piracy seriously and had sent the report to USTR on 
January 7 without informing the Embassy.  The CAFTA-required 
report on television broadcast piracy had been assigned to 
the general director of ONAPI (National Office of Industrial 
Property) Enrique Ramirez.  After the meeting we received a 
copy of the report which shows that the government is taking 
new steps to monitor illegal broadcasts.  It fails to mention 
the recent favorable outcome of a long-running television 
broadcast piracy case against major Dominican station 
Telemicro.   The Ambassador delivered the demarche separately 
to President Fernandez and Foreign Minister Morales Troncoso, 
who assured that they would study the issue. End summary. 
 
2.   During the January 31 demarche on television broadcast 
piracy (ref a), Under Secretary of Industry and Commerce 
Marcelo Puello and his Director for Commercial Treaties, Hugo 
Rivera Santana, told the DCM that in December the Secretary 
for Industry and Commerce had assigned the task of preparing 
the report on television broadcast piracy to the general 
director of ONAPI (National Office of Industrial Property) 
Enrique Ramirez.  The officials said that the Dominican 
Government considered the CAFTA agreement as binding from the 
day it was signed in August 2004.  The government takes very 
seriously the side letter to CAFTA which commits the 
Dominicans to stop broadcast piracy and to regularly report 
about their efforts to do so.  The original Dominican plan 
was for the National Office for Copyright Protection (ONDA) 
to prepare the report, but ONDA failed to complete the task 
(ref b).   The Embassy had pushed ONDA for the report without 
any results. The Embassy had also addressed the reporting 
requirement with Under Secretary Puello, the Foreign 
Ministry, the Attorney General's office and other government 
agencies involved with the issue.  This was the first notice 
of the Dominicans' reassignment of responsibilities. 
 
3.  Puello said that FedEx had delivered the ONAPI report to 
USTR on January 7.  Ecopol received a copy for the first time 
on February 1.  After reviewing the documents, we can 
understand why the they might have been overlooked after 
arriving at USTR.  The report is a compilation of Spanish 
language documents with no cover identifying them as the 
required broadcast piracy report. 
 
4.  The documents show that in December the Secretary of 
Industry and Commerce took control of the reporting issue and 
formally assigned to ONAPI the task of preparing the 
broadcast piracy report.   ONAPI approached agencies involved 
in the effort against piracy to assess actions and then 
reported back to the Secretary of Industry and Commerce. 
ONAPI documents the fact that in November the Santo Domingo's 
District Attorney's Office obtained a court order to monitor 
and document  broadcasts by Telemicro and Canal del Sol, two 
large scale offenders.  Both stations are known by the 
Embassy to have continued making illegal broadcasts.  The 
information collected from monitoring should be of use in 
future prosecutions. 
 
5.  An important item not reported in the documents forwarded 
to USTR is the October 22, 2004, conviction of Channel 5 
(Telemicro) for broadcast piracy in a combined civil and 
criminal case filed in April 2002 .  The court ordered 
Telemicro to pay a total of RD$415,000 (about US$14,000) to 
Twentieth Century Fox, Tristar Pictures, Columbia Pictures 
and Warner Brothers.  The court sentenced Telemicro,s 
manager to three months in prison.  Jaime Angeles, the MPAA's 
Santo Domingo representative, appealed the judge,s refusal 
to take Telemicro off the air. 
 
6.  The Ambassador raised the piracy issue with Foreign 
Minister Morales Troncoso on January 31 and with President 
Fernandez on February 2.  The Ambassador stressed the urgency 
for the Dominican Government to act with firmness to stop the 
long running problem.  The Ambassador reminded President 
Fernandez that his public proposal to bolster the film 
industry would not succeed unless IPR protections for films 
are strengthened. 
HERTELL