A group of broadcasters has won a preliminary injunction against web TV service FilmOn in a federal court in Washington DC. Judge Rosemary Collyer said: “This Court concludes that the Copyright Act forbids FilmOn X from retransmitting Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs over the Internet. Plaintiffs are thus likely to succeed on their claim that FilmOn X […]
ViaSat is a satellite broadband supplier serving consumers over North America. It already has an action running against Space Systems/ Loral, a satellite builder, alleging that SS/L has misused patents granted to ViaSat for its High Throughput broadband satellite – which SS/L built. Now ViaSat is alleging additional patent infringements against SS/L. The new action […]
Al Jazeera says that Egypt is deliberately jamming its signals, and that the jamming is emanating from four specific sites in and around Cairo. Al Jazeera announced on September 3 that independent experts had determined on the basis of extensive investigation where the jamming was coming from and were confident about both the locations and who is responsible. Trackers […]
A State Duma committee has approved a bill to introduce fines of up to 1 million rubles ($30,000) for Internet users, websites, service providers and search engines failing to comply with an online piracy blacklist. The bill was approved in the first of its three required readings on Tuesday, the head of the constitutional affairs […]
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) and the Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) have commenced work on a critical next step toward widespread industry adoption of Ad-ID and Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) coding for all advertising and video content assets. At the centre of this effort is the establishment of the […]
The Spanish government is set to approve a new telecom law (Ley General de Telecomunicaciones) by mid September with the aim of clarifying the telco sector, simplifying the legislation and paving the way for the introduction of new technologies and added-value services. The present Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) will disappear and will be replaced by […]
The Council of State, the highest Italian legal-administrative body, has ruled that the channel encrypting by the public service broadcaster RAI is illegal. This marks an important victory for Sky Italia; RAI had been encrypting certain programmes on Sky’s satellite platform including newscasts and important exclusives such as the Italian national football team’s matches. The […]
UK broadband providers are being asked to create a database of customers illegally downloading music, films and books, which could be used to disconnect or prosecute persistent offenders. BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB and TalkTalk are being approached by music and film companies to agree a voluntary code for policing illegal downloading. Negotiations have been under […]
Nigeria’s Copyright Commission on August 29th arrested 12 suspects for the illegal theft and re-transmission of MultiChoice’s TV signals. A local manager of the NCC, Emeka Ogbonna, said the Commission acted on a tip-off from residents in Awada community at Onitsha in Anambra state. He said that during the raid, the Commission seized illegal transmitting […]
A high-profile battle over fast-growing retrans fees, the new spotlight on digital rights and a more vocal FCC (particularly in the ownership caps arena) have the industry nervously looking ahead to see if expectations regarding retrans revenue growth may have to be adjusted, says an SNL Kagan Report. The CBS/Time Warner Cable blackout, which began […]