China will step up its fight to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) by targeting online piracy, state media has said, amid calls for Beijing to do more on widespread copyright infringement. “It is vital to protect online IPR,” Wang Ziqiang, spokesman for the National Copyright Administration, was quoted as saying by the China Daily. “If […]
Internet users — not Internet companies — should be held legally accountable for uploading pirated content on web sites, Russian Communications and Press Minister Igor Shchyogolev has said. But Shchyogolev added that it is in the responsibility of the Internet companies to delete illegal content “upon the signal from the lawful property rights owner.” The […]
South Africa will complete the process of migrating from analogue to digital television by December 2013, Communications Minister Radhakrishna Padayachie has stated. The analogue switch off date was originally set for November 2011 but has since been changed to December 2013 by government. The minister also confirmed South Africa would adopt the DVB-T2 standard for […]
Cable Television Laboratories and Cable Europe Labs have committed to a closer and more extensive working relationship under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) establishing a one-year trial programme by which the two cable research and development organisations might develop longer-term joint cooperation. “This accord builds upon the five years of collaboration on specification development and […]
The BBC’s Business Editor Robert Peston says the Ofcom report to Jeremy Hunt the Culture Secretary recommends News Corp’s proposed takeover of BSkyB should be referred to the Competition Commission. Ofcom handed its report into the Department of Culture of Media and Sport on December 30th and speculation has been widespread that it ‘plays safe’ […]
Jeremy Hunt, UK Culture Secretary, admitted that whatever decision he took on referring the News Corp BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission it was bound to be judicially challenged by the ‘losing’ side. He refused to give a timetable for his decision but said: “”This is a very, very hot potato and I’m aware of […]
The BBC Trust has concluded provisionally that on-demand BBC programmes should only be made available to TV platform operators through the BBC iPlayer, and should not be made available on a programme-by-programme basis. The BBC iPlayer should be made available in standard formats that the great majority of other TV operators can readily adopt, the […]
ITV can look forward to relief from its most onerous regulation after Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said changes in government responsibility gave him power to reform or abolish it. After telling a London audience that he was unsympathetic to contract rights renewal – a limit on how much ITV can charge advertisers for its […]
A merged Comcast and NBC would have to abide by tailored ‘net neutrality conditions’ for at least seven years, according to leaked details from the FCC’s proposed terms for approval of the deal. Regardless of what happens with national neutrality rules, the newco would be banned from blocking or throttling rival content as well as […]
Portugal’s third largest cable operator Cabovis_o has filed a complaint in Brussels against the Portuguese State’s role in a €800 million credit line for investment in Next Generation Networks (NGN). According to a company spokesperson, Cabovis_o formally requested that the European Commission examine whether there was “undue favouritism” to companies for the construction of fibre […]