Stopped right at the border: Greek broadcasts create offence.

Karen Murphy thought that screening a broadcast from a Greek satellite in her pub in England (and paying the Greek broadcasters), showed enterprise in the spirit of the EU’s open borders, and would save her money – and so did her solicitors. But Media Protection Services thought this was not playing the (beautiful) game.

Section 297 of the CDPA 1988 creates an offence of dishonestly receiving a programme included in a broadcasting service provided from a place in the United Kingdom with intent to avoid payment. This section seems to be intended to prevent people circumventing the encryption, for example by using pirate cards to view the original programme. However, the Court said that, although the signal was transmitted from a Greek ground station, and although the Greek broadcaster, Nova, had added other material to the images – specifically its logo, and an optional Greek commentary (and could presumably therefore have stopped or delayed the broadcast if they wished) - the Premiership matches being shown (filmed live by BSkyB) were nevertheless “a broadcasting service provided from a place in the United Kingdom”. A bit of an own goal for Ms Murphy; and another plank in the stockade against free trade in digitally based intellectual property rights across the EU.

This decision is disturbing for another reason. It is difficult enough keeping up with the myriad of offences relating to copyright infringement and neighbouring rights even if they are clear. However, the Court here had to look at several Directives, and the history of amendments to the legislation to reach a conclusion which seems, with all due respect, not to be what the words actually say – the Greek company was not broadcasting from the UK, and neither BSkyB (which was making the programme) nor the Premier League (which was editing the programme) were providing the broadcasting service in any conventional sense. Creating offences in this way does not create respect for intellectual property rights and encourages ill feelings against the scope of intellectual property protection which is something the government is hoping to address. The current position justifies the response of an alleged offender: “It’s all Greek to me”.

Ms Murphy’s defence team will now argue the case under competition law principles and are claiming that in footballing terms the case is only at the half time interval.

Comments

[custom software]

Nice post,
So if you do what she did in your own home is it still illegal?
Thanks for writing, most people don't bother.