TVCatchup caught out by European Court
The European Court has ruled that free UK streaming sites will not be permitted to show live television without obtaining rights clearance from broadcasters, and any sites that do will be in breach of copyright.
The case was forwarded by UK broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, who brought the case against popular online live streaming site TVCatchup.com, which allows users to watch the aforementioned channels live alongside the linear broadcast.
The Court declared that TVCatchup was in breach of its 2001 law, which states that original broadcasters have exclusive rights to approve and restrict programming use by third parties.
“EU law seeks to establish a high level of protection for authors of works, allowing them to obtain an appropriate reward for the use of those works,” said the European Court Justice.
“Television broadcasters may prohibit the retransmission of their programmes by another company via the Internet. That retransmission constitutes, under certain conditions, a ‘communication to the public’ of works which must be authorised by their authors.”
Bruce Pilley, Director of TVCatchup, responded to the ruling by saying that it would not affect even one third of its 12 million registered users.
“TVCatchup.com is here to stay, we are not thinly disguised purveyors of filth, we remain Europe’s first and only legal Internet cable service and the ECJ opinion affects only a handful of channels we carry,” added Pilley.
However this ruling to protect copyright against broadcasters is expected to affect a number of free streaming sites in the UK.
Speaking to the Guardian, Tony Ballard, a broadcast lawyer and partner at London law firm Harbottle & Lewism said: “It is one in an increasingly long line of decisions by which the court appears to be laying the foundations for a new European legal order in copyright and other forms of intellectual property,
“On the one hand, it is strengthening authors’ rights, such as by extending the concept of communication to the public, which subsumes the old broadcasting right, to encompass the activities of those who, like TVC, intervene in the distribution of broadcast services.
“On the other, it is limiting those rights in pursuit of single market principles by outlawing exclusive national licensing, extending the principle of exhaustion of rights to downloads, limiting the amount that copyright proprietors may charge as royalties and balancing owners’ rights against those of users.”