The Consumers Federation of Kenya (COFEK) has accused pay-TV provider StarTimes of hijacking the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) signal to air the FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
The consumer body, which is already involved in separate legal proceedings against StarTimes, claims it hacked into the KBC signal and pirated it without KBC’s consent.
“The ICT geniuses that are Chinese managed to beat KBC at it’s own game after devising a way of picking the analogue signal and passing it off as if it was a digital signal yet KBC had already blocked them on DDT (digital) platform,” said COFEK in a statement on its website.
Kenyans watching the first game between Brazil and Croatia yesterday got a rude shock as their screens went blank and they were directed to watch the match on other platforms, including the analogue ones.
COFEK alleges it has seen letters where KBC had stopped StarTimes from broadcasting live World Cup matches.
A court case now looms because according to the body, there was contravention of FIFA rules and the Kenyan copyright law.
The Supreme Court recently ruled consent from respective media houses was required for broadcast signal distributors before airing free-to-air (FTA) channels.
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