Dish Network L.L.C. v. Gaby Fraifer

USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 1 of 28 FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-10223 ____________________ DISH NETWORK L.L.C., Plaintiff-Counter Defendant-Appellee, versus GABY FRAIFER, TELE-CENTER, INC., PLANET TELECOM, INC., individually and together, d.b.a. UlaiTV, d.b.a. PlanetiTV, d.b.a. AhlaiTV, Defendants-Counter Claimants-Appellants. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 8:16-cv-02549-TPB-CPT ____________________ Before BRANCH, ABUDU, and KIDD, Circuit Judges. USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 2 of 28 2 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 KIDD, Circuit Judge: We vacate our prior opinion in this case and substitute the following opinion in its place. DISH Network L.L.C. has the exclusive rights to air certain Arabic-language programming in the United States. The defend- ants owned a service that allowed their customers in the United States to view that programming through set-top boxes without DISH’s permission—and without paying DISH. So, DISH sued the defendants for copyright infringement and won at the district court. In this appeal, the defendants challenge DISH’s ownership of the copyrighted material, the district court’s determination that the defendants infringed DISH’s copyrights, and several rulings that the district court made at the bench trial. We are not persuaded by any of the challenges, so we affirm the district court’s judgment. I. BACKGROUND DISH is a television provider that airs, among other things, twenty-one Arabic-language channels (“Protected Channels”) in the United States. DISH delivers its programming to millions of subscribers by satellite and by over-the-top services using a public internet infrastructure. DISH has entered into written agreements with the appro- priate networks to exclusively distribute and publicly perform in the United States all programming that aired on the Protected Channels. This appeal concerns DISH’s agreements with MBC FZ USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 3 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 3 LLC, a media and broadcasting organization located in the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) that provides five of the Protected Chan- nels, including MBC1, MBC Drama, MBC Kids/MBC3, MBC Masr, and Al Arabiya. In June 2016, MBC registered with the United States Copy- right Office four audiovisual works that aired on the Protected Channels (“Registered Works”). These Registered Works are epi- sodes of television series produced by MBC and first published in the UAE. They include Sabah Al Khair Ya Arab (Fed. Reg. # PA0001992320), Tasali Ahla Alam (Fed. Reg. # PA0001992317), Saherat Al Janoub (Fed. Reg. # PA0001992319), and Chef Hassan (Fed. Reg. # PA0001992315). Gaby Fraifer is the founder, sole shareholder, and president of Tele-Center, Inc., and Planet Telecom, Inc. (collectively, the “de- fendants”). The defendants owned and operated the UlaiTV and AhlaiTV services as well as TCI-Direct.com and Planet-itv.com. UlaiTV and AhlaiTV offered customers access to hundreds of Ara- bic-language channels, and customers ordered UlaiTV and AhlaiTV products, including set-top boxes (“STBs”), on TCI- Direct.com and Planet-itv.com. By May 3, 2017, the defendants had gone out of business. In August 2016, DISH sued the defendants for copyright in- fringement. DISH alleged that it had the exclusive rights to distrib- ute and publicly perform the works that air in the United States on the Protected Channels. According to DISH, the defendants unlaw- fully captured and retransmitted the Protected Channels to USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 4 of 28 4 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 customers of UlaiTV and AhlaiTV services in the United States through the sale and distribution of STBs and through their ser- vices, which were supplemented by CDNs and encoders. It worked like this: Once the defendants captured live broad- cast signals of the Protected Channels, they would “transcode these signals into a format useful for streaming over the [i]nternet, transfer the transcoded content to one or more servers provided, controlled, and maintained by [d]efendants, and then transmit the Protected Channels to users of their [s]ervices through [over-the- top] delivery, including users in the United States.” The defendants transmitted the Protected Channels over the internet to users of their STBs using content delivery networks (“CDNs”), which are groups of internet servers that are distributed throughout the world. The CDNs brought content close to the physical location of each end user, which improved the reliability and stability of the customers’ internet viewing experience. The defendants also used encoders to push the Protected Channels onto their CDNs. “Encoders . . . transformed the Protected Channels and the [Registered] Works airing on those channels into formats suited for streaming.” The parties each filed motions for summary judgment re- garding the two elements of the test for copyright infringement: (1) DISH’s ownership of valid copyrights in the Registered Works; and (2) the defendants’ alleged infringement of those copyrights. The district court ruled in DISH’s favor on the issue of ownership USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 5 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 5 but found a genuine issue of material fact as to the defendants’ al- leged infringement. The case proceeded to a bench trial, and the district court subsequently ruled in favor of DISH, awarding it a permanent in- junction and $600,000 in statutory damages, attorney fees, and costs. The district court found that the defendants’ use of CDNs and their use of encoders were each sufficient to establish direct copyright infringement. The defendants appeal the district court’s judgment. II. STANDARD OF REVIEW We review the district court’s order granting summary judg- ment de novo. Saregama India Ltd. v. Mosley, 635 F.3d 1284, 1290 (11th Cir. 2011). “In conducting our review, we apply the same legal standards as the district court . . . [and thus] review the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and draw all reason- able inferences in [its] favor.” Id. (citing Acevedo v. First Union Nat’l Bank, 476 F.3d 861, 865 (11th Cir. 2007)). For a bench trial, we review de novo the district court’s con- clusions of law, but we review findings of fact for clear error. Com- pulife Software Inc. v. Newman, 959 F.3d 1288, 1301 (11th Cir. 2020). We review for abuse of discretion the district court’s evidentiary rulings, including its “decisions regarding the admissibility of ex- pert testimony and the reliability of an expert opinion.” United States v. Frazier, 387 F.3d 1244, 1258 (11th Cir. 2004) (citing Gen. Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 141–43 (1997)). USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 6 of 28 6 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 III. DISCUSSION DISH must first present a prima facie case of copyright in- fringement. To do so, DISH must show that (1) it owns a valid cop- yright in the works and (2) the defendants copied protected ele- ments from the works. Saregama, 635 F.3d at 1290. We begin with ownership. A. Ownership The Copyright Act requires owners of United States works to register their works before instituting an infringement action, 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), but the same is not true for owners of “foreign works.” Kernel Recs. Oy. v. Mosley, 694 F.3d 1294, 1302 (11th Cir. 2012) (citation omitted). Yet “foreign works can also be registered . . . because Congress has granted substantial litigation benefits to owners of registered works.” Id. In addition, a certificate of regis- tration, if “made before or within five years after first publication of [a] work [,] . . . constitute[s] prima facie evidence of the validity of [a] copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.” 17 U.S.C. § 410(c); see Kernel Recs., 694 F.3d at 1302 (“A certificate of registra- tion serves as prima facie evidence of copyright validity.” (citing 17 U.S.C. § 410(c)). Thus, this statutory presumption of validity ap- plies to registered foreign works. Id. Because MBC registered each episode of the Registered Works with the Copyright Office within three months of the work’s first publication, MBC was entitled to a statutory presumption of ownership. See 17 U.S.C. § 410(c). USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 7 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 7 But the statutory presumption of ownership does not end our inquiry because DISH is not the author of the copyrighted works. “If a plaintiff is not the author of the copyrighted work[,] then [the plaintiff] must establish a proprietary right through the chain of title in order to support a valid claim to the copyright.” Motta v. Samuel Weiser, Inc., 768 F.2d 481, 484 (1st Cir. 1985). When evaluating chain of title, courts determine the initial owner of a copyrighted work and then assess whether the initial owner trans- ferred its exclusive or non-exclusive rights to the new owner. See John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. DRK Photo, 882 F.3d 394, 410 (2d Cir. 2018). 1. Initial Ownership The laws of a work’s country of origin determine initial ownership. Saregama, 635 F.3d at 1290. The parties agree that UAE copyright law governs, and they cite to UAE Federal Law No. (7) of the Year 2002 Concerning Copyrights and Neighboring Rights.1 But they disagree as to whether the works should be considered “Joint Works,” as the defendants contend, or “Collective Works,” as DISH asserts. This distinction matters because it controls whether MBC initially owned the Registered Works. The district court agreed with DISH and found that they were Collective Works. 1 Both parties rely on the same translation of the operative UAE statute. World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO], Federal Law No. (7) of the Year 2002 Concerning Copyrights and Neighboring Rights, WIPO Doc. AE001EN (Jan. 7, 2002), https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/legislation/details/7 [https://perma.cc/54MV-GZ8R]. USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 8 of 28 8 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 Under Article 1 of UAE copyright law, a Joint Work “is the work compiled by a number of persons whether the lot of each one can be separated or not and which cannot be listed under the collective works.” WIPO, supra note 1, at 4. Under Article 27 of UAE copyright law: A joint author in the audio-visual, audio or visual work can be: 1. The scenarist[;] 2. The one who mod- ifies a literary existing work to an appropriate audio- visual method[;] 3. The dialogist[;] 4. Music composer if he composes it specifically for the work[;] 5. The director if he practi[c]es actual supervision to accom- plish the work. Id. at 11. The defendants relied on their expert, UAE intellectual property specialist Bassel El Turk, to argue that under Article 27, an audiovisual work must be a Joint Work as a matter of law be- cause the contributors to an audiovisual work are listed separately. See id. In support of this interpretation, the defendants provide screenshots from the opening and closing credits of the Registered Works. The credits list individuals performing the roles set forth in Article 27. By contrast, DISH maintains that the MBC audiovisual works are Collective Works under UAE copyright law. Under Arti- cle 1, a Collective Work is: USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 9 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 9 The work compiled by a group of authors under the direction of a natural or legal person who pledges to publish it in his name and under his own supervision. The contribution of authors will be assimilated into the public goal aimed by such a person in such a way that separation and distinction of each author’s con- tribution becomes impossible. WIPO, supra note 1, at 3. Under Article 26, “[t]he natural or legal person who has directed creation of the collective work can practi[c]e alone the author’s economic and literary rights in it un- less there is an agreement otherwise.” Id. at 11. DISH argues that merely identifying individuals along with their titles in the opening and closing credits of the Registered Works does not establish that each individual’s contributions can be separated or distinguished, as required by UAE law. DISH sup- ports its position with the declaration of John Richard Whitehead, MBC’s Group General Counsel. The declaration states that MBC never intended for the authors’ contributions to the Registered Works to be separable or distinct. Moreover, the authors who par- ticipated in creating the Registered Works performed overlapping roles, making it impossible to distinguish each author’s contribu- tions. DISH further asserts that Article 27 simply identifies persons that “can be” a joint author in an audiovisual work and makes such persons authors as a matter of law. We agree with DISH. A plain reading of the definition of a Joint Work establishes that a work created by multiple authors may qualify as a Joint Work only if the definition of a Collective Work USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 10 of 28 10 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 is not met. Id. at 4. The definition of a Collective Work requires that the contributions of the authors cannot “be separated or dis- tinguished.” Id. at 3–4. In this case, “authors in various departments [including] script writing, literary adaption, dialog, musical compo- sition, graphics, [and] directing . . . contributed to the MBC Works and performed overlapping roles.” In this way, each MBC audiovis- ual work was meant to be viewed as a whole, and it had been mar- keted in this manner. The defendants’ screenshots do not alter our analysis. For example, Whitehead explained in his declaration that a scripted work is the product of an author who writes a first draft, another who edits the script, and another who makes additional revisions to the script. Despite this, “[t]he credits may only identify the orig- inal script writer, although other persons contributed to the crea- tion of the final script,” thus making the contributions impossible to separate or distinguish. The defendants’ reading of Article 27 would broaden the definition of a “Joint Work” to encompass all audio-visual works. See id. at 4, 11. But the language of Article 27 does not support this blanket categorization. Id. at 11. Article 27 uses the phrase “can be” to identify which contributors to a work may be considered joint authors. Id. In other words, Article 27 identifies a limited number of roles, such as the scenarist and the dialogist, that may qualify as joint authors when their collaboration meets the definition of a Joint Work. Id. To classify all audiovisual works as Joint Works USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 11 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 11 because they have multiple contributors would erase the distinc- tion between Joint Works and Collective Works. Article 26 of UAE copyright law, which governs Collective Works, vests the rights of each author in the person or entity that directs the creation of the work, unless there is an agreement oth- erwise. Id. Here, MBC directed the creation of the Registered Works and has acquired all the economic and literary rights in the works. We conclude that DISH has established MBC’s initial own- ership in the Registered Works pursuant to Article 26. 2. Validity of the Registrations Tangentially, the defendants contend that MBC’s United States copyright registration applications are not accurate and can- not be given deference because they identify the Registered Works as “works made for hire,” which UAE law does not recognize. Un- der 17 U.S.C. § 101, a “work made for hire” is created “by an em- ployee [working] within the scope of . . . employment,” or where each contributor to a collective work expressly agrees that the work shall be considered a work made for hire in a written and signed instrument. DISH explains that the copyright registrations properly iden- tify the Registered Works as works made for hire because a copy- right applicant is required to submit its application using principles of United States copyright law, even when registering a non-United States work. Moreover, DISH asserts that any error was not suffi- ciently material to invalidate the registrations. Finally, DISH points USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 12 of 28 12 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 out that this challenge should have been raised as an affirmative defense. We start and end with the last point: The defendants should have raised this challenge as an affirmative defense and failed to do so. Roberts v. Gordy, 877 F.3d 1024, 1028 (11th Cir. 2017) (“[T]he dis- trict court’s review of validity was . . . the determination of an af- firmative defense.”); see also Bateman v. Mnemonics, Inc., 79 F.3d 1532, 1541 (11th Cir. 1996) (“Once the plaintiff produces a certifi- cate of copyright, the burden shifts to the defendant to demon- strate why the claim of copyright is invalid.”). “Correspondingly, failure to plead an affirmative defense typically results in waiver of that defense.” Roberts, 877 F.3d at 1028. We recognize that the de- fendants moved to amend their answers to include this affirmative defense. But the district court denied the motion, noting that dis- covery had closed and the motions for summary judgment had been filed. The defendants do not appeal this ruling, so we find no reason to revisit it. In sum, MBC is entitled to a statutory presumption of own- ership under 17 U.S.C. § 410(c) because the Registered Works are considered Collective Works under UAE law and the defendants failed to challenge the validity of the copyright registration as an affirmative defense. We therefore conclude that MBC initially owned the copyrights in the Registered Works, which are validly registered with the United States Copyright Office. USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 13 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 13 B. Transfer of Ownership Having determined that MBC initially owned the copyrights in the Registered Works, we must now determine whether MBC properly transferred ownership to DISH. The defendants argue that MBC’s copyrights in the Registered Works were not properly transferred to DISH because the agreements between MBC and DISH do not satisfy the requirements of UAE copyright law. DISH counters that MBC and its affiliates properly transferred copyrights that included the exclusive right to publicly perform the Registered Works in the United States. DISH submits that the transfer of cop- yrights should be assessed under United States law and not UAE law, while the defendants insist that UAE law governs but offer no binding or persuasive authority to support their position. Nor do they offer any supporting arguments besides a single conclusory statement concerning UAE law. “We have long held that an appel- lant abandons [an issue] when he either makes only passing refer- ences to it or raises it in a perfunctory manner without supporting arguments and authority.” Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014). As the defendants’ argument is per- functory, they have abandoned their argument that UAE law ap- plies, and we will apply the laws of the United States. The defendants present several arguments to challenge the district court’s determination that the licensing agreements be- tween DISH and MBC properly transferred copyrights under sec- tions 201(d) and 204(a) of the Copyright Act. Most of them fail for a simple reason: Section 204(a) does not permit the defendants to USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 14 of 28 14 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 challenge the sufficiency of the written agreements transferring ownership of the copyrights. In Imperial Residential Design, Inc. v. Palms Development Group, Inc., we held that “the chief purpose of section 204(a) [of the Cop- yright Act] . . . is to resolve disputes between copyright owners and transferees and to protect copyright holders from persons mistak- enly or fraudulently claiming . . . copyright ownership.” 70 F.3d 96, 99 (11th Cir. 1995). Section 204(a) states that “[a] transfer of copy- right ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights con- veyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.” 17 U.S.C. § 204(a). Accordingly, we determined that it would be “unusual and unwar- ranted to permit a third-party infringer to invoke section 204(a)” where, as here, “there is no dispute between the copyright owner and the transferee about the status of the copyright.” Imperial Resi- dential Design, Inc., 70 F.3d at 99. In this case, the district court found that the licensing agree- ments between DISH and MBC properly transferred the copy- rights. And there is no dispute about the status of the copyright ownership between MBC, the original copyright owner, and DISH, the transferee. DISH’s declaration from an MBC representative af- firms that MBC transferred the exclusive rights in question to DISH, so the defendants are precluded from challenging the suffi- ciency of the written agreements transferring the copyrights from MBC to DISH. USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 15 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 15 In addition to challenging the sufficiency of the written agreements, the defendants raise two other arguments regarding the transfer of ownership. First, they contend that DISH failed to show that it owned one of the Registered Works, Saherat Al Janoub, because the registration certificate did not identify a season number. Second, they argue that two of the Registered Works, Sa- herat Al Janoub and Sabah Al Khair Ya Arab, were improperly reg- istered because MBC transferred the copyrights to its Luxembourg affiliate before the registrations were filed. The defendants cite no legal authority to support these two reasons to invalidate the cop- yright transfers. We therefore decline to consider them. Sapuppo, 739 F.3d at 681. C. Copyright Infringement DISH has established that it owns the copyrights in the Reg- istered Works. We must now determine whether the defendants infringed upon DISH’s copyrights—in other words, whether the “defendants copied protected elements from the [works].” Saregama, 635 F.3d at 1290 (citation modified). Under the Copyright Act, infringement occurs when any of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights are violated. 17 U.S.C. § 501(a). One of these exclusive rights, “in the case of . . . audiovis- ual works, [is] to perform the copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(4). “To perform . . . a work ‘publicly’ means . . . [among other things] to transmit . . . a performance . . . of the work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process . . . .” 17 U.S.C. § 101. If the images or sounds comprising a work “are received beyond the USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 16 of 28 16 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 place from which they are sent,” then the work was transmitted. Id. Moreover, “an infringing performance that originates abroad but terminates in the United States constitutes a domestic Copy- right Act violation.” Spanski Enters., Inc. v. Telewizja Polska, S.A., 883 F.3d 904, 916 (D.C. Cir. 2018). As relevant here, direct “[c]opyright infringement is a strict liability offense,” so DISH need not “prove unlawful intent or cul- pability.” See EMI Christian Music Grp., Inc. v. MP3tunes, LLC, 844 F.3d 79, 89 (2d Cir. 2016). By contrast, secondary liability requires culpa- ble conduct: “One infringes contributorily by intentionally induc- ing or encouraging direct infringement, . . . and infringes vicari- ously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to ex- ercise a right to stop or limit it.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913, 930–31 (2005) (citation modified). DISH alleged that the defendants violated its copyrights in two different ways. First, they used CDNs to transmit the Protected Channels that aired the Registered Works to the STBs that they sold to the public. Second, the defendants used encoders to “push” the Registered Works onto the defendants’ CDNs for transmission to the STBs. The district court found each of these methods inde- pendently sufficient to prove direct copyright infringement. The defendants appeal these findings and dispute the admissibility of the evidence the district court considered. We agree with the dis- trict court that the defendants’ use of encoders constitutes direct copyright infringement. Since we affirm the district court as to the USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 17 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 17 use of encoders—an independently sufficient basis to find copy- right infringement—we need not reach the issue of whether the defendants’ use of CDNs also constituted copyright infringement. We first address the defendants’ challenges to DISH’s expert testimony and evidence in support of direct infringement, and then we address their evidentiary challenges to the PayPal and WHOIS records. 1. Expert Testimony and Evidence The district court relied on testimony and evidence from Pascal Metral, DISH’s expert witness, to find that the defendants’ conduct constituted direct copyright infringement. On appeal, the defendants challenge the admissibility of this testimony and evi- dence. First, the defendants argue that Metral was not qualified to testify as an expert. Second, they dispute the admissibility of Me- tral’s accompanying exhibits, including the monitoring reports, the screenshots, and his expert report. And even if we find that this ev- idence was properly admitted, the defendants argue it was insuffi- cient to show that the Registered Works were transmitted in the United States. a. Expert Qualification Federal Rule of Evidence 702 governs the admissibility of expert testimony. 2 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 2 Federal Rule of Evidence 702 states: “A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if the proponent demonstrates to the court that it USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 18 of 28 18 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 589–95 (1993). In applying Rule 702, our analysis requires us to de- termine whether: (1) the expert is qualified to testify competently re- garding the matters he intends to address; (2) the methodology by which the expert reaches his conclu- sions is sufficiently reliable as determined by the sort of inquiry mandated in Daubert; and (3) the testi- mony assists the trier of fact, through the application of scientific, technical, or specialized expertise, to un- derstand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. City of Tuscaloosa v. Harcros Chems., Inc., 158 F.3d 548, 562 (11th Cir. 1998). And “[w]hile there is inevitably some overlap among the basic requirements—qualification, reliability, and helpfulness— they remain distinct concepts and the courts must take care not to conflate them.” Frazier, 387 F.3d at 1260. The defendants focus their arguments on the qualification and reliability requirements. The defendants argue that Metral’s testimony should have been excluded because he was not qualified to testify as an expert. They contend he is an attorney who has no training in computer science or engineering. According to Rule 702, a witness may be qualified based on “knowledge, skill, experience, training, or is more likely than not that: (a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other spe- cialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert's opinion reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts of the case.” USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 19 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 19 education.” Fed. R. Evid. 702 (emphasis added). If a witness is “re- lying solely or primarily on experience, then the witness must ex- plain how that experience leads to the conclusion reached, why that experience is a sufficient basis for the opinion, and how that expe- rience is reliably applied to the facts.” Frazier, 387 F.3d at 1261 (quot- ing Fed. R. Evid. 702 advisory committee’s note to 2000 amend- ment). The district court observed that Metral, during his twelve years of experience in antipiracy operations, “supervised the mon- itoring and investigation of copyright infringement on behalf of the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (‘IBCAP’)[,] . . . and he was responsible for investigating not only [the d]efend- ants’ STBs but also more than 100 additional television streaming services on behalf of members of IBCAP.” While the district court acknowledged Metral’s lack of technical training and that he had done legal work for DISH prior to this case, it still found him qual- ified to testify as an expert based on his experience Regarding reliability, the district court found that “Metral’s analysis [was] sound, and his conclusions [were] reliable.” To deter- mine reliability, courts may assess: “(1) whether the expert’s theory can be and has been tested; (2) whether the theory has been sub- jected to peer review and publication; (3) the known or potential rate of error of the particular scientific technique; and (4) whether the technique is generally accepted in the scientific community.” Id. at 1262 (citation omitted). These factors, however, are “illustrative, not exhaustive” as trial judges must have “considerable leeway” in USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 20 of 28 20 Opinion of the Court 24-10223 determining reliability. Id.; Knight ex rel. Kerr v. Miami-Dade County, 856 F.3d 795, 808 (11th Cir. 2017). Lastly, to be admissible, expert testimony must be helpful to the factfinder. Fed. R. Evid. 702(a). The district court found Metral’s analysis to be straightfor- ward because he “simply identifie[d] television programming that aired over the internet on certain days and times.” Metral identified 861 occurrences where the Protected Channels were transmitted to users of the defendants’ STBs. To do so, he used the defendants’ STBs to watch television programming, took screenshots of pro- grams that he watched, and “identif[ied] the video stream URLs corresponding [to] the CDNs used in transmitting the Protected Channels to STBs.” His findings were reviewed by a security tech- nician for accuracy and “confirmed by the deposition testimony of representatives from the networks that exclusively licensed the Protected Channels to [DISH].” Moreover, “the [n]etworks identi- fied specific, copyrighted audiovisual works exclusively licensed to [DISH] that were depicted in the screenshots or that otherwise aired on the Protected Channels on the dates the channels were transmitted to STBs as indicated in Metral’s report.” We find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s allowing Metral to testify as an expert. The district court is afforded wide discretion in evaluating the qualification and reliability of experts, United States v. Costa, 691 F.2d 1358, 1361 (11th Cir. 1982), and our review of its decisions has a “limited scope,” Rubinstein v. Yehuda, 38 F.4th 982, 998 (11th Cir. 2022). Here, the district court weighed the flaws that the defendants identified in Metral’s qualifications USCA11 Case: 24-10223 Document: 62-1 Date Filed: 08/06/2026 Page: 21 of 28 24-10223 Opinion of the Court 21 and qualified him nonetheless in light of his extensive experience. We cannot say this was an abuse of discretion, particularly as the defendants cite no caselaw requiring an expert to possess technical training or education. Nor was it improper for the district court to find Metral’s straightforward, well-documented analysis to be reli- able. b. Monitoring Reports and Screenshots The defendants argue that the district court should have ex- cluded the monitoring reports and screenshots accompanying Me- tral’s testimony because they are inadmissible hearsay created in anticipation of litigation. We disagree, because DISH properly laid the foundation to admit these exhibits under the business records exception to the hearsay rule, codified in Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6). 3 Metral authenticated the monitoring reports and screen- shots by testifying about how this evidence was acquired and main- tained by his team of security analysts in the course of a “standard” collection process, as well as his knowledge of the information 3 Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) states: “A record of an act, event, condition, opinion, or diagnosis if: (A) the record was made at or near the time by — or