Premier League ads warn pubs over using foreign set-top boxes
The Premier League is to launch an ad campaign warning pubs and clubs that it intends to crack down on unauthorised broadcasts of football matches using foreign satellite feeds.
The campaign is being backed by BSkyB which holds the UK rights to offer Premier League football matches to UK pubs and clubs.
The full-page ad, which is running in key titles read by publicans such as the Morning Advertiser, is pitched as a legal warning shot to the estimated thousands of pubs and clubs that side-step BSkyB by taking cheap foreign satellite feeds.
BSkyB has about 44,000 pub, club and office subscribers to its Premier League football packages at a cost of about £1,000 per month.
The Premier League has felt emboldened to run the ads following two judgments delivered by the European Court of Justice in recent months.
The first related to a case brought by Southampton pub landlady Karen Murphy who used a Greek decoder card to show live Premier League matches to pubgoers at a fraction of the rate charged by Sky.
The ECJ ruled that fans at home could buy foreign set-top box decoder cards from foreign broadcasters, but that the Premier League could go after pubs and clubs on the grounds of copyright infringement.
The UK’s high court of justice will make a final decision on how to apply the ECJ ruling to the Murphy case on 24 February.
However, the Premier League and BSkyB consider a second ruling to be much more material to the battle against unauthorised broadcasts.
On 3 February the UK court delivered its judgment on an ECJ ruling relating to a company called QC Leisure, a provider of Greek and Arabic decoder cards to publicans in the UK.
The ad being run by the Premier League warns publicans that this ruling has clarified its right to pursue unauthorised broadcasters.
“It is clear that the law gives us the right to prevent the unauthorised use of our copyrights in pubs and clubs when they are communicated to the public without our authority,” says text in the ad. “We will now resume actions against publicans.”
The knock-on effect of the UK court ruling earlier this month is that another major supplier of foreign set-top boxes and cards, Euroview, has in the last few days shut down its current business operation.
A statement on its website informs customers that it is cancelling contracts from the 10 February.
“To fully protect the business of its customers Euroview Sport is now investing in making changes to its service which will ensure that it offers a risk-free solution which does not infringe the rights of the FAPL or any other third party,” the company said. “Until these changes are fully effected Euroview has made the decision to temporarily suspend its services.”
source: guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/16/premier-league-pubs-foreign-set-top-boxes
Thousands of pub landlords face heavy fines or jail as the Premier League and BSkyB begin a campaign of prosecutions against pubs that illegally broadcast English football matches.
The hardline approach follows a court judgment earlier this month in which the Premier League won a copyright ruling against British pubs that use non-UK decoder cards to show games.
The Premier League and BSkyB will signal their intent in warnings placed in adverts running in the drinks trade press today.
It follows a case brought by the League against satellite TV company QC Leisure. In a High Court ruling this month, Judge David Kitchin found that pubs violate League copyright when customers can view footage of previous games, logos, pre-recorded video sequences and anthems that are not authorised for use across borders.
As a warning of what is to come, an Essex landlord was this month ordered to pay more than £19,000 in fines and costs after being convicted of showing Premier League and international matches via Sky Sports without a commercial viewing agreement.
Frederick Young, licensee of the Rose Inn in Shenfield, was convicted on 6 February at Basildon Magistrates’ Court and fined £2,500 for each of six offences of dishonest reception of a television transmission.
Young, prosecuted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988, was also told to pay £4,522 in costs.
In a further development, one of Britain’s main distributors of foreign boxes and cards, Euroview, has ceased trading.
In a notice posted on its website this month, it said the latest High Court judgment found the Premier League was “entitled to copyright protection of certain artistic works and graphics that formed part of the relevant broadcasts of football matches in these proceedings”.
It warned: “There is now the prospect that companies providing a service that allows the ‘communication to the public’ of any such artistic works could cause their customers to be liable for copyright infringement.” The company told customers that their accounts with it would cease on 10 February.
Next week in the High Court, a Portsmouth landlady, Karen Murphy, who was convicted after using a Greek decoder to show matches, will seek to have the case against her overturned.
Ms Murphy was paying £118 a month to show games in her pub, The Red, White & Blue, as opposed to the Sky subscription of £480.
She has taken the case to the European Court of Justice, which delivered a complicated ruling that should see her prosecution and £8,000 fine overturned in the High Court but still upheld the League’s right to copyright.
Since that ruling, Premier League content has been developed to include more logos and symbols that uphold its ownership of the material, meaning landlords cannot flout the rules by turning the television on and off at key times.
Despite next week’s hearing, the League and BSkyB believe the QC Leisure ruling is the more significant.
The thousands of landlords potentially under investigation would include those suspected of breaching League copyright by using illicit foreign feeds to show games as well as pubs that screened Sky’s matches bought with a domestic subscription and not featuring the “pint glass” on-screen symbol showing the subscription had been purchased for commercial use.
Today’s campaign of warning adverts is likely to trigger fresh activity in the courts as officials from the Federation Against Copyright Theft and other investigators step up visits to pubs suspected of showing matches unlawfully.
source: independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/pub-landlords-face-jail-in-new-sky-crackdown-on-tv-football-6953021.html