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On 31 August 2006 the Ministry for the Economy and Finance gave the green light for the merger of the satellite television platforms CanalSat (Canal Plus, Vivendi Group) and TPS, the two major operators in the pay television market in France (see IRIS 2006-8/22). In view of the extensive risk of harm to competition, this authorisation - issued after obtaining the opinion of the competition council (Conseil de la concurrence) - was made subject to the implementation of 59 undertakings on the part of Vivendi Universal and the Canal Plus group. The operation, which resulted in the creation of the...

Compensatory channels, or “bonus channels”, were awarded to the “historic” operators (TF1, M6 and Canal+) by the 2007 “Television of the Future” Act (see IRIS 2007-3/20) to compensate for the prejudice suffered as a result of the early stoppage of their broadcasting in analog mode and the appearance of competitor channels on digital TV. Since the switch to all-digital was scheduled for November 2011, these compensatory channels could theoretically start broadcasting next month. Except for the fact that in December 2010 the European Commission began infringement proceedings against France in respect...

At long last the repressive part of the HADOPI legislation has now been finalised. The arrangements, set up by the Act of 12 June 2009 and supplemented by the Act of 28 October 2009, attempt to combat the illegal downloading of works by introducing ‘a graduated response”. The first stage is in the hands of the HADOPI, an independent administrative authority with responsibility for sending warning messages to Internet users using peer-to-peer systems whose IP addresses have been collected by the authorised rights management societies. For the second stage, the Constitutional Court censured the HADOPI’s...

“Miracle at St Anna”, the film by Spike Lee first shown in the USA in September 2008, has not had an international career, and for good reason. In October 2007 the production company On My Own had granted TF1 International the exclusive right to exploit and distribute the film worldwide except in the USA, Canada and Italy. In return, TF1 International undertook to pay it an advance of USD 11 million: 5% to be paid at the time of signing the agreement (“deal memo”) and 95% on acceptance of delivery of all the film material. One year later, however, as the film - which tells the story of four black...

On 19 July 2011 the European Commission sent requests for information in the form of letters of formal notice, the first step in the process of an EU infringement procedure, to 20 EU member states. The member states in question, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, have not yet notified to the Commission measures to implement the new EU Telecoms Package, formally adopted after two years of heated negotiations at the end of 2009...