U.S. Supreme Court handed Cablevision a victory in its remote storage DVR fight when as expected, it refused to hear arguments in the case, instead deferring to a lower court’s decision that the DVR service does not leave cable providers liable for content owners’ copyrights. Cablevision called the decision, which paves the way for a […]

As both sides await a judge's ruling over the legality of RealNetworks’ DVD copying software RealDVD, the major studios have filed a new complaint, charging that RealNetworks lied in court about circumventing DVD copy protections. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) asked the Judge to include in the court record five patent filings by […]

Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, has accused a small group of "ideologically focused" people within the UK government of trying to undermine his organisation's financial security. The BBC chief directed particular attack on the government and Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, listing a series of causes – including the funding of Channel 4 and the […]

Germany’s federal cartel office has confirmed it won't be changing its mind on banning the merger of the main three MSOs KDG, Unity and Kabel BW. It also made it clear it would also disallow a merger between any two of them. In a swipe at the companies now struggling investors, the president of the […]

Tiscali director of television Simon Hunt has backed BT's recent call for broadcasters to pay for the online distribution of their content. “The example I always come back to is the BBC and satellite. The BBC spends a lot of money on Sky so we can watch its programmes at home. It also spends a […]

Sci Fi has been found to be in "serious and significant" breach of its licence conditions after the channel failed to produce a recording of its output. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a viewer complaint over the volume levels of commercials on Virgin Media feed. The ASA brought in Ofcom when Sci Fi admitted […]

From Branislav Pekic in Rome Italian commercial broadcaster Mediaset has requested that the European Court in Luxembourg annuls the decision of the European Commission regarding the illegality of state subsidies for the acquisition of DTT decoders. At question is the European Commission's decision of 2007, that subsidies awarded by Italy for the years 2004 and […]

UK communications minister Lord Carter has defended plans to levy a £6-a-year tax (E7.1) on every phone line to raise up to £1.5 billion to help pay for the next generation of super-fast internet networks, as the most transparent way of investing in a critical part of Britain’s infrastructure. Having looked at the investment plans […]

UK media regulator Ofcom is proposing to crack down on the amount of “sustained sex scenes and sexual language” shown on TV immediately after the 9pm watershed, to better protect younger viewers from explicit content broadcast free-to-air by so-called “babe channels” such as Playboy TV and Babeworld TV. ….

Japan’s upper house has approved a revision to the Copyright Law making downloading of pirated content illegal. The revision will go into effect on January 1st. Uploading of pirated music and video content is already proscribed, but downloading has been tolerated as long as it is for personal use. Legislators have prescribed no penalties for […]