News Corp has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Prime Minister Berlusconi's Mediaset broadcasting group. News Corp's Sky Italia is suing two units of Mediaset, RTI and Publitalia its sales house, alleging they refused to let it buy advertising time. “News Corporation believes these companies have violated EC rules governing free competition, as well as Italian […]

Italian public broadcaster RAI risks being fined up to E90 million, or about 3 per cent of its annual turnover, for irregularities in procedures following the exit from DTH platform Sky Italia. Under examination is the continued encryption of its programmes on satellite which is prohibited by the rules of public service. At the moment, […]

In contrast to rival ISPs Sky has backed the content industry's calls to introduce suspension of service for suspected file-sharers. In response to this week's government request for proposals about how it should tackle file-sharing, Sky said it would apply technical measures to file-sharers' internet accounts provided they could be proved guilty. "It makes sense […]

Following up James Murdoch's contention that the BBC's ubiquity online will threaten the pluralism of available news, Five CEO Dawn Airey has said the BBC should charge viewers for iPlayer and other online content otherwise commercial rivals will be crippled. Airey said, "perhaps the BBC should go back to having a couple of big broadcast […]

TiVo has filed complaints in the US District Court against AT&T and Verizon Communications for infringement of three TiVo patents – 'Multimedia Time Warping System', 'System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams', and 'Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System'. The complaints seek damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction, similar to that issued by the […]

Talks between TF1 and M6 and pay-TV platforms about carriage of their respective thematic channels have reached a deadlock say reports. DTH operator Canal Plus currently holds exclusive rights to the channels, including Histoire, TV Breizh, Ushuaia TV, Odyssee, Serie Club and Eurosport, for which it pays approximately E60m. The broadcasters have offered their channels […]

The UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is to launch an investigation into how the habits and personal information of web users are used to target Internet advertising. Competition regulators said they had been prompted to launch the study, which could ultimately lead to an industry code of practice, because of a need to “update […]

BskyB has written to the BBC Trust expressing "serious concerns" about its handling of Project Canvas. The Trust's conduct of a consultation process on Canvas "will only serve to undermine further industry confidence in its ability and inclination to act as a genuinely independent regulator of the BBC", Sky said. Since February, the Trust has […]

China said it would consider launching an appeal against a World Trade Organisation ruling that the US claimed would help open up Chinese markets for media as well as curbing rampant intellectual piracy.The WTO said that it was impermissible to give one state-owned enterprise the monopoly for importing products such as films and books in […]

During the recent board meeting of AEPOC, Europe's Anti-piracy association for the protection of encrypted works and services, AEPOC discussed the "Pirate Bay" sentence in Sweden and the election of the "Pirate Party" into the European Parliament. AEPOC views the "success" of the Pirate Party, which questions the concept of intellectual property and copyright, and […]