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On 21 October 2010 the European Court of Justice rendered its judgement in case C-467/08 Padawan v SGAE, calling the current application of Spanish private copying levy into question. The judgment maintains that the Spanish private copying levy is abusive and that it does not meet with what Directive 2001/29/EC establishes. The Court ruled that the levy should only be charged on individuals, but not legal entities, companies or national authorities, which should be exempted. Firstly it should be clarified, as opposed to what has been implied in the media, that the ruling of the European Court of...

On 24 June 2010, the European Commission issued a set of reasoned opinions to 12 member states (Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia) requesting that they proceed with updating their national broadcasting legislation in order to bring it into compliance with the Audiovisual Media Service (AVMS) Directive. The Directive, which replaced the Television without Frontiers Directive of 1989 (as amended), was adopted in December 1997 with the intention of bringing the EU’s broadcasting rules up to speed with the digital age. The...

At the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 20 May 2010, the Spanish Government approved a new Decree that regulates high definition digital terrestrial television (HD/DTT). The Decree was published in the official journal on 2 June as Royal Decree 691/2010. It develops the technical specifications for HD/DTT, a service recently regulated when the Parliament approved the General Law of Audiovisual Communications (see IRIS 2010-4: 1/21), and establishes the conditions to broadcast in HD/DTT. As regards the former, HD/DTT services will follow the ETSI EN 300 744 transmission system, use video resolution...

On 26 March 2010, in line with Royal Decree 944/2005 and international radio communication regulations (ITU-R WRC 2007), the Spanish Government approved Royal Decree 365/2010. The Decree organises the allocation of digital terrestrial TV (DTTV) multiplexes after the switch-off of analogue terrestrial television. Two phases have been established in order to free the frequency band 790-862 MHz from DTTV services by 1 January 2015. According to Royal Decree 944/2005, each national commercial broadcaster will be allocated a multiplex after switch-off. The public service corporation, CRTVE, will be...

Digital switchover was achieved as planned in Spain in April 2010. The migration, which took place in three phases beginning in 2008, was progressively implemented throughout the 73 technical areas into which the country was “divided” by the National Technical Plan on DTTV (see IRIS 2008-9: 9/11). On 30 March, 84 of the 90 technical projects of the implementation plan were definitively switched off, while the whole process was completed before the official deadline of 3 April. As of March 2010 and according to Impulsa TDT - the association created by broadcasters to promote the adoption of DTT...