Former US Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV cable network has claimed Rupert Murdoch’s Italian satellite TV company dropped the network in Italy because it hired liberal politics news anchor Keith Olbermann. News Corp, which controls Sky Italia, has said its dispute with Current Italy had nothing to with politics and is purely about money. […]
Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, has said that proposals from the US and British governments to block Internet access to file-sharing websites would endanger freedom of speech and push both countries toward being more like China. “I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems,” […]
Changes to Intellectual Property systems could add up to £7.9 billion to the UK’s economy, the first report looking at how it can drive growth has suggested. The publication of Digital Opportunity follows a six-month independent review of IP and Growth, led by Professor Ian Hargreaves. He was asked to consider how the national and […]
Sergey Sitnikov, head of Russia’s media regulator (Roskomnadzor), says new “universal” ten year TV (and radio and Internet) licences will be issued later this year or early in 2012, states Russia’s Interfax in a report carried by BBC Monitoring. “Universal licences will start being granted as soon as changes are made to legislation on the […]
Appeals by Playboy TV that two of its websites don’t fall within the scope of ATVOD regulation, have been rejected by Ofcom. This means the two video-on-demand websites must comply with new ATVOD enforced rules designed to protect children from video material which might cause them serious harm. The new rules do not apply if […]
The UK government has started the consultation process aimed at putting the communications sector firmly on the path to long-term economic growth by calling for evidence on how to reduce regulatory burdens and future-proof for the digital age. The wide-ranging review will reform existing legislation, deregulating where appropriate to make sure the UK communications sector […]
The Arab League, an assembly of all the Arab nations, has formally asked Arabsat and Nilesat to cease transmissions of Libya’s Jamahiriya Satellite Channel and “any other channel” that might be sympathetic to the Libyan government. The decision was taken at the end of a special meeting in Cairo on May 15th. However, the request […]
An independent review into how the intellectual property system can better drive growth and innovation is set to recommend that a revolution in copyright law could make the UK as important a centre for the distribution of digital content as it became in financial services after the Big Bang, according to the Financial Times. The […]
US senators have re-introduced a bill aimed at giving US authorities more tools to crack down on websites selling pirated movies, television shows and music and counterfeit goods. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, said the legislation would protect the investment American companies make in developing brands and creating content and protect the jobs […]
Long-delayed efforts by Mexican fixed line incumbent Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) to enter the pay-TV sector appear to have moved one step forward after the telco announced that a federal court had ruled that the Secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) must make a decision on its request to offer such services. Telmex has previously […]