Sky is now in the Crapper.

semper fidelis

Hi. all you young whippersnappers. Its me again. In case you think that I had gone AWOL and backed off from challenging Watty due to the razor sharp prose of his defenders - no such luck !
I am keeping my powder dry while I wait for some work documents which I have requested from the States so that I will be able to prove once and for all that Watty is specialising in technical gymnastics. Once I get my hands on them I will be back in the fray.
In the meantime however I feel that the argument between us may have lost most of its relevance due to the announcement on Friday last that the dame in the UK who took her case against Sky to the European Court has won.
As far as I can see the Court has found in her favour on the basis that it was illegal for the Football guys in the UK to sell the rights to their games on a country by country basis and that in accordance with European law it should be on a European basis and the fact that the Greek guys from whom she had purchased the service had bought the rights for Greece but once they had the rights for Greece it was a De Facto situation that they could provide the service to any country within the EU.
Her lawyers cited the European "Television without Frontiers" Directive to back up their case.
Therefore what she was doing was not illegal.
As I see it the same thing applies to the rights for music, films, talk shows and weekly series like Desperate Housewives or CSI.
Therefore if the RTE transmission covers the whole of the UK or not it makes no difference as last Friday's ruling means that it is legally O.K. Therefore it makes no difference if Watty is right or if I am right regarding the legality of the RTE coverage into the UK using KA band - no matter how far it goes into the UK it is still kosher.
This would mean therefore that RTE no longer needs to be encrypted and can operate as a pure "Free To Air" system from now on.
Am I right or am I right ??

cgarvey

Moved IrelandOffline > Satellite

Onikage

What are you talking about and why should anyone care? If you want to chat with someone learn how to use the private message system.

Tony

@ Semper. There is some merit to your arguement but would this now mean that RTE will be priced out of the market 'rights wise' for US shows? Do the rights become de facto pan european and therefore more expensive beacuse of the viewership increase ?

Minstrel27

semper fidelis wrote: »

As far as I can see the Court has found in her favour

The court hasn't given a judgement yet.

If you go to Feedback they might be able to teach you how to send a Private Message to Watty as your vendetta really is very boring.

Apogee

His analysis is flawed. If RTÉ were to transmit across the entire UK FTA from 28E, UK broadcasters would start complaining and the end result would be that programme makers would no longer sell stuff to RTÉ.

Leaving aside his Watty fixation, his primary issue with Saorsat is that the footprint will not be restricted to the island of Ireland and there will be spillover into the UK. Because of frequency re-use, this overspill will likely be restricted to western parts of the UK. Semper's point apparently is that any spillover will result in copyright holders immediately kicking up a fuss. History has shown this not to be the case:

1. The idea that the Astra 2D footprint only covers the UK is a complete fiction - 2D is easily receivable in France, Germany etc with a 60-80cm dish. However, it has satisfied rights holders or else Freesat would never have got off the ground.

2. ITV-HD was at one point transmitted on a pan-European footprint with only some PIDs stripped out. Despite the fact that pretty much any FTA HD receiver could display the channel (showing US films in HD), rights holders did not object.

3. The published footprint for Badr 4 shows that it is receivable only over ME and North Africa. Yet, in reality it can be received on 60/80cm in southern UK and several channels show 24/7 US films and series. No rights holder has complained.

4. Five was soft-encrypted in analogue days on Videocrypt as a means of restricting the channel to the UK. Despite the fact that Videocrypt receivers were widespread in Ireland and the rest of Europe, this was again sufficient to satisfy original copyright holders.

So it's clear that programme makers have a pretty low threshold in terms of satisfying them that their copyright is not being infringed once the broadcaster can show they have made a reasonable effort to restrict reception.

Apart from the fact that Saorsat will use a considerably smaller footprint than that available on any other satellite over Europe, it also had two additional features which will make UK viewers less likely to tune in.

1. It will be transmitting from 9e rather than 28E, the Sky/Freesat home location. Therefore, it would require realigning dishes or installation of dual beam dishes.

2. It will be transmitted on the Ka-band requiring purchase of a Ka-LNB. Additionally, it will be practically impossible to use any Sky digibox to receive it.

Finally, I would have thought it likely that RTÉ would have sounded out programme makers to see if the Saorsat approach was agreeable before venturing down this route.

watty

RTE programs themselves would cost considerably more due to larger royalities and wages required if serving a larger audience.

The Sky court loss was expected. It's a related but not the same issue. No-one is obliged to make a service cover any particular area. The case doesn't oblige broadcasters to have larger pan european beams covering all of Europe. The part Sky lost was hinged on if it was valid to subscribe to any PayTV service in Europe no matter where in Europe you are going to try and receive it. Obviously the answer is yes.

There is a secondary issue. Can a Commercial premises use a Domestic Subscription? In this case it's not Sky' UK Domestic Subscription being used in a Pub. If Tring, Cyfra+ or Sky Italia have a separate Commercial Rate, then in taking out a domestic subscription you are protentially comitting Fraud (obtaining Services by Deception), Sky UK can't bring a case, it's up to a DPP somewhere. Also you are breaking the Civil law concerning the contract, Tring, Cyfra+ or Sky Italia etc who sold the Domestic Sub that should have been a Commercial Sub can sue you for Damages.

So on all counts Sky was wasting their money.

There is a 3rd issue. This does NOT affect increased costs of home produced programs which will have an element that varies with expected number or showings, audience sice (1Million Ireland vs 20Million UK etc) and that is selling "rights" to show film, Sports etc to particular broadcast.

There are subtle issues. Levi case showed that the Public can buy Levis from any retailer in EU freely, or if from outside Europe, normal customs etc apply. But the case established that the Wholesale Import chain could be controlled by Levi. If a Trademark holder objects, in EU you can't as Retailer or Wholesaler import from wherever you like. Play.com in Channel Islands also had a problem with importing from Hong Kong. I don't remember how that worked out.

So Anyway there may be non-exclusivity in Rights sales. But Rights holders can legitimately tie price to a Broadcaster to the number of customers they have. Like authorising someone to print their own copies of books, software, CDs etc but pay a per unit royalty.

So "exclusivity" may be gone. But costs for Broadcasters will likely be based on customer base. For PayTV, it's the number of subscriptions you sell, for FTA TV, it will be based on Geographic Coverage.

Lots of programs are sold today on non-exclusive basis for FTA TV. Any number of Stations can buy them. But cost is based on Broadcast coverage. That won't change.

So RTE isn't affected really, they can't be seen to be deliberately serving all of the UK as well as Ireland. That would make the "royalties" x10 to x20 higher even on Irish Produced content.

Tony

Thats true of course, at this point it is only the advocates legal opinion. This is usually supported by the court but its not a done deal by any means.

Minstrel27 wrote: »

The court hasn't given a judgement yet.

Tony

Apogee wrote: »

Finally, I would have thought it likely that RTÉ would have sounded out programme makers to see if the Saorsat approach was agreeable before venturing down this route.

I'm not so sure about that point the process seems to be pretty haphazard at the moment .

watty

As far as RTE and RTE NL are concerned about Saorsat.

• Saorsat is backup feed for DTT sites, so identical content to Saorview
• Fill in for people that can't get Saorview, so identical content to Saorview
• It's Ministerially approved and is happening.
• It's a cost saving compared with having very many more DTT sites.

There is other stuff too about Saorsat. RTE will tell us eventually and make more information public like Dish Size, Exact LNB band etc...

Also the RTE junior / RTE+, RTE 2 HD, RTE News Now are not yet approved. They won't start the info campaign till they are, which is supposed to be "really soon". Not sure if present "officials" at DCENR or if new Government is needed, so not sure if this "soon" is next week or so, or after 9th March etc.

Saorsat isn't really a Satellite Platform in sense that Freesat is. More a single very high up Saorview TX site using DVB-S2 instead of DVB-T.