Grey Market - Broadcasting

Broadcasting

In television and radio broadcasting, grey markets primarily exist in relation to satellite radio and satellite television delivery. The most common form is companies reselling the equipment and services of a provider not licensed to operate in the market. For instance, a Canadian consumer who wants access to American television and radio services that are not available in Canada may approach a grey market reseller of Dish Network or DirecTV. There is also a grey market in the United States for Canadian satellite services such as Bell TV or Shaw Direct.

In Europe some satellite TV services are encrypted for rights reasons, as they are only entitled to broadcast films, sporting events and US entertainment programming in a certain country or countries, hence only residents of the UK and Ireland may subscribe to Sky Digital. In other European countries with large British expatriate populations, such as Spain, Sky is widely available. Although Sky does not condone the use of its viewing cards outside the UK or Ireland, and has the technology to render them invalid, many people continue to use them.

Illegitimate importing of "free-to-view" Sky cards from the UK to Ireland is often done so that Irish Sky customers can receive Channel 5 and some of the other channels not generally available via Sky in the Republic because of rights issues. Irish Sky viewing cards, which allow viewing of Irish terrestrial channels, are imported into the UK. Northern Ireland residents subscribing to Sky can watch RTÉ One and Two and TG4, although not TV3, which carries many of the same programmes as ITV, a lot of the programmes airing before ITV can show them.

It is also becoming increasingly common in the UK for some pubs to use satellite decoder cards from Greece, Norway, Poland or the Arab world to receive satellite TV broadcasting live English football matches from those countries. Alternatively, they may use cards which allow pirate decryption of scrambled signals. Such cards are typically much cheaper than the cards available in the UK from Sky (who charge extra fees for public showing licenses). However, Sky has taken civil and criminal action against some who do this. Two recent cases involving grey cards have been referred to the European Court of Justice. The suppliers of grey cards and Karen Murphy have won their cases at the European Court of Justice. The judges have ruled that right holders cannot license their content on an exclusive territorial basis as it breaches EU Law on competition and free movement of goods and services. However, whilst this ruling allows domestic viewers to subscribe to foreign satellite services, pubs may still need permission from right holders such as the Premier League to broadcast content. This is because certain elements of the broadcast such as branding are copyrighted. The matter now rests on the High Court to incorporate the ruling into UK Law. C-403/08 - 2011-10-04 - Football Association Premier League and Others

There has been two High Court judgements on this matter now. Mr. Justice Kitchin has ruled that QC Leisure and other suppliers of foreign satellite systems can carry on with their businesses if they can prevent copyright elements such as branding of football matches from being shown in a public place. The Premier League can pursue prosecutions of licensees who show branding of matches via foreign satellite systems. Karen Murphy has won her case in the High Court following the ruling from the ruling from the European Court of Justice. The ruling from Justice Stanley Burnton allows Ms Murphy to shop for the cheapest foreign satellite provider. However the ruling from Justice Kitchin prevents Ms Murphy from showing matches in her pub via foreign satellite systems because branding are copyrighted. It is no longer illegal though for a customer to purchase a foreign viewing card from an EU country and use it outside the territory.