Reuters: Top News: News Corp says BBC accusations on TV piracy baseless

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News Corp says BBC accusations on TV piracy baseless Mar 29th 2012, 04:40 Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Data request investigation points finger at UK newspapers Wed, Mar 28 2012 TV piracy claims heap more pressure on Murdoch empire Wed, Mar 28 2012 Murdoch's News Corp says Australian TV piracy claims baseless Wed, Mar 28 2012 News Corp unit promoted piracy against rivals - report Tue, Mar 27 2012 UK lawmaker urges News Corp TV hacking claims probe Tue, Mar 27 2012 1 of 2. A view of the News Corporation building in New York August 4, 2009. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:40am EDT (Reuters) - News Corp President Chase Carey said that allegations in a BBC documentary that a subsidiary ran a secret unit promoting pirating of pay-TV rivals were "unfair and baseless", backing a call for the broadcaster to retract the allegations. The BBC's Panorama alleged in a documentary broadcast on Monday that NDS, a pay-TV smartcard maker recently sold by News Corp for $5 billion, hired a consultant to post the encryption codes of ITV Digital, a rival of the then Sky TV, on his website. Widespread piracy after the online publication of the codes contributed to the 2002 collapse of ITV Digital, which had been set up by the parties that later formed ITV, Britain's leading free-to-air commercial broadcaster, in 1998. In a statement late on Wednesday, Carey said the BBC program presented "manipulated and mischaracterized emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations." In a separate letter to Panorama, Executive Chairman of NDS Abe Peled asked the broadcaster to retract the allegations immediately. Carey said that News Corp fully endorsed Peled's letter to Panorama. Separately, an Australian paper alleged that NDS had let piracy go unchecked at U.S. satellite broadcaster DirecTV less than a year before News Corp looked into buying the business. The article in the Australian Financial Review, citing internal emails from NDS, added to questions over News Corp practices after reports that NDS promoted the piracy of rivals and after scandals at News Corp's British newspapers. NDS said in a statement that it "completely rejects the allegations made by the Australian Financial Review." DirecTV, which depended on NDS for the security of its scrambling system, suffered major piracy problems around the turn of the century that ate into revenues as viewers using pirated cards watched it for free. (Reporting by Sakthi Prasad; Editing by Ed Davies) Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above.

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