Four UK men who ran a file-sharing website which leaked films online – sometimes before they were released in cinemas – have received custodial or suspended sentences. Steven Pegram, Mark Rollin, Paul Taylor and Alan Stephenson were part of a group which uploaded films online for others to download via BitTorrent on their website ‘thefoundary.name’. […]
Salisbury will become the first entire city in the UK to gain access to Openreach’s new, future-proof Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband technology, in what is expected to be the fastest city-wide network build in the UK. The UK’s digital infrastructure company is aiming for its ‘Fibre First’ build programme in Salisbury to be completed within a […]
The chair of the BBC suggests that the system of media regulation is no longer fit for the modern age, after the corporation was forced to delay plans to make more programmes available for up to a year on iPlayer. Sir David Clementi says that iPlayer’s 30-day catchup window is one of the main complaints […]
Japan’s Supreme Court has ruled that people who use a mobile phone to watch TV programmes must pay a subscription fee to the country’s public broadcaster, NHK. The ruling confirms the existing Broadcasting Law can be extended to cellular phone users with suitable equipment. Judge Toshimitsu Yamasaki rejected two appeals challenging that the law applies […]
In the week that Spotify has launched an EU competition case against Apple for imposing unfair and discriminatory conditions on competing services in its app-store, European Publishers Council Chairman and CEO of de Persgroep, Christian Van Thillo, highlights that this same challenge is also faced by news publishers offering apps for media consumers. Van Thillo […]
Tech giants have become increasingly dominant and UK government ministers must open the market up to increase consumer choice and give people greater control over their data, an independent review has concluded. Harvard Professor Jason Furman has warned that UK competition rules must be updated to be fit for the digital age. He cited the […]
Adding to the problem of its biggest outage to date, it was revealed on March 13th that Facebook is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors. They will be examining its data-sharing deals with other major technology companies, according to the New York Times. Facebook has given no explanation for the outages so far, though has […]
The news that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) had cancelled its MENA TV rights contract with beIN Media on March 12th has prompted Qatar-based beIN to launch a “major international legal dispute” with the AFC. beIN says that almost 18 months ago, Saudi Arabia “unlawfully and overnight forced beIN MEDIA GROUP (beIN), the legitimate pay-TV […]
Leading figures from the Middle East’s growing eSports community believe that government-backing would give the Gen Z-led phenomenon the backbone it needs to “thrive” in the UAE and wider region. Mohammad Albanna, who is on the board of the UAE eSports Federation, and Saeed Sharaf, CEO of eSport Middle East and President of the Syrian […]
Responding to parents’ demand for greater consistency across video on demand and online games platforms, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has launched what it says is an innovative new industry collaboration with Netflix to move towards classifying all content on the service using BBFC age ratings. Netflix will produce BBFC age ratings for […]