From the Times: Publican appeals over right to pick her football satellite
A publican in Southsea who decided to buy a satellite dish, decoder and card and then subscribe to Greek TV station, Nova, for £800 rather than BSkyB for £6000, is appealing a conviction for criminal copyright infringement. She's already lost one appeal.
Now we all know copyright based companies aspire to be different but this is an EU citizen buying a service from a business in another EU country, rather than buying the equivalent, significantly more costly service from the local EU branch of a multinational organisation. So it must at least raise some interesting legal questions.
I wonder if the excellent Jeremy Phillips and co. have any more informed views on the subject.
Jeremy was kind enough to offer a comment, which for some reason Blogger misplaced. He said:
ReplyDelete"I for one am unhappy at any attempt to split the single European market into profitable little micro-domains under the guise of IP protection. This isn't a piracy issue, for goodness' sake. Allowing DRM systems to segmentise national markets and accepting the notion that DVDs and games can be used only in certain zones, irrespective of their lawwful purchase, are symptoms of the same disease."
I couldn't agree more.