I am stumped. It looks as though many pubs will be hit by a dangerous precedent, a UK judge ruled in the Premier League's favour that showing 3PM games using foreign channels is illegal. The two things that won the case for the Premier League were: 1 - The digibox card being used was for home viewing. 2 - The footage had the Premier League logos and thus breached copyright This case went straight to the Crown Court and thankfully that means any appeals will quickly end up at the European Court, a place where the Premier League and Sky have no influence. It highlights to me (my personal opinion) that the duration of the hearing may expose this judge to be inept or intimidated by big British business. First of all the EU already stated free competition must reign so I doubt the judge checked if Denmark, the source of the footage, hold the same money grabbing tactic that Sky use. Namely the home and public house licence debacle. Secondly the copyright infringement makes zero sense, if this is what the Danish channel shows on their footage and if somebody buys their subscription package then there is no possible way the viewer is in breach of copyright infringment. Any infringment should be on part of the channel, not the subscriber. We do not know if the home subscription is an issue, we would need to know first how subscriptions are sold in Denmark but after just a few hours in court we can very safely assume that the judge did not look through the necessary information. But the copyright infringment appears to be built on a very weak argument, imagine buying ordering a Blu-Ray disc of Iron Man 3 from a French online store then finding yourself in court being accused of copyright infringment by Disney-Marvel! Did you breach copyright? Did the French online store? Surely not. It will be very interesting to see what happens next, and it would be in the interests of all the pubs involved to request the British equivalent of a class action so there is one case only and that they fight together. Then they can all afford the appeal in Brussels where the judges will not be intimidated, because that is what appears to have happened!
I watched the Fulham game on a live feed using a foreign box, locally to me, and there was no digibox card to this system, and the Barclay Premier league logo was blacked out in three places, but all this is garbage in my view, and bully tactics by Sky, who want to dictate, so the sooner it goes to the European courts the better, British high court system will always come down in favour of big business! Should be interesting....................
It would be nice to see action against judges, many times the European Courte have had to over rule them, and this is usually with basic European Law knowledge that pretty much everyone on the streets already now. Is there really anyone out there isn't aware of the law that means all EU companies must be free to trade within the EU? And has anyone heard of WIPO? It seems to completely overrule British laws on copyright, it's a worldwide agreement that the UK was not only a signatory but also one of the founders who wanted it implemented. It interestingly alludes to the Premier League being at fault to any copyright infringement in case. Passing the buck on as usual.
