A coalition of UK rights holders including the Premier League and trade bodies representing the music, film and TV are preparing to oppose ISPs in the judicial review of legislation to tackle illegal downloading. The Premier League and eight other organisations, including the Producers’ Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact), the Motion Picture Association and […]
A trademark battle could mean Dave is forced to change its name after a legal challenge by a branding consultancy. Dave, a London agency owned by Engine, a marketing services group, successfully blocked the UKTV channel’s attempt to claim ownership of the Dave marque with the European Union’s trademark body. Both firms operate from offices […]
Chinese government’s efforts to protect online intellectual property rights (IPR) will be strengthened this year by promoting the establishment of related industry associations, said Liu Shaodong, an official in the online broadcasting department of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). The number of websites that have a licence for playing video content […]
Two computer scientists at Ballarat University, Australia, have written a program that can fight against Internet movie piracy. Student Robert Layton and researcher Prof Paul Watters of the university’s Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (ICSL) say they have written a program that can track illegal downloads through torrent websites. The scientists claim through its tagging technique, […]
Dutch anti-piracy body BREIN has teamed up with the Motion Picture Association of America to take down a further 12 US websites it accuses of offering links to illegally downloadable material. The move follows action taken towards the end of 2010 to close 29 such sites. Earlier this month, it shut down 39 sites in […]
BBC Worldwide has made a deal with Dutch telco KPN for distribution of the BBC’s five main channels on the operator’s IPTV service as well as carriage of BBC 1 and BBC 2 on the Digitenne digital-terrestrial service. Under the terms of the deal, BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC 4 and BBC HD […]
Italy’s Lega Calcio Serie A could end up being the saviour of fledgling Italian pay-TV platform Dahlia TV, after Sweden’s Wallenberg Group decided to call it a day. According to local media reports, the Italian Football League has already obtained a positive opinion, in principle, of the Competition Authority, Ministry of Economic Development, and liquidator […]
A study done by the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) identifies and characterises users who upload content on the main P2P piracy networks and defines their incentives for doing so. The research study examines the behaviour of the users who are responsible for publishing over 55,000 files on the two main portals (Mininova and […]
Football’s governing body FIFA has confirmed the extension of its broadcast rights agreement with Al Jazeera Sport for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar. The agreement is the first to be signed in FIFA’s media rights distribution process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, which it […]
The lawyer taking hundreds of UK citizens to court for alleged illegal downloading has dramatically withdrawn from all cases. The patent court in London was currently scrutinising 26 cases brought by ACS: Law on behalf of its client MediaCAT. The law firm had sent thousands of letters to alleged file-sharers. In a statement read to […]