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On 22 February 2013 Ofcom (Office of Communications), the UK broadcasting regulator, published its decision to fine broadcasting Licensee Biditis Ltd GBP 30,000 for a number of breaches of the Broadcasting Code. The case concerns the activities of Al-Alamia TV, owned by the licensee Biditis Ltd, which is a satellite broadcaster based in London and broadcasting at various times to southern Europe and the Middle-East. Al-Alamia hosted a beauty contest, Miss Arab London 2011 and broadcast an accompanying television series of the same name on 7, 14, 21, and 29 October 2011. The breaches of the Broadcasting...

On 17 April 2013, the UK Supreme Court overturned earlier decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal and decided that reading or viewing copyrighted material online does not require the permission of the rightsholders, despite that fact that a temporary copy is made in the computer’s cache and screen. The case was brought by an association of public relations professionals who use on-line monitoring or search services; a company sends them monitoring reports with the opening words of an article, selected text, and a hyperlink. This requires a licence from the publishers of the newspapers...

The Grand Chamber of the European Court held, by nine votes to eight, that the UK’s ban on political advertising on television did not violate Article 10 of the Convention. The majority opinion in this controversial judgment reflects a somewhat particular approach compared to the Court’s previous case law on political advertising, such as in VgT Vereinigung gegen Tierfabriken v. Switzerland (see IRIS 2001-7/2 and IRIS 2009-10/2). Essentially the judgment in the case of Animal Defenders International v. UK accepts that a total ban on political advertising on television, characterized...

The House of Lords Communications Committee released its report on Media Convergence on 19 March 2013. The report focused on the increasing convergence of different media including television and broadcasting, and the traditional print media, in large part due to technological advances, particularly the Internet. The report highlighted the fact that the lines that had previously delineated these areas, to some extent, are becoming increasingly blurred. Newspapers through video content, and broadcasters through written, are using the Internet to encroach upon the traditional territories of each...

In its judgment of 28 February 2013, the High Court ordered six leading internet service providers (with a 94% market share of UK internet users) to block access to three peer-to-peer file-sharing websites called KAT, H33T and Fenopy. This follows earlier High Court decisions requiring blocking of other sites (see IRIS 2012-7/25 and IRIS 2011-9/21). The case was brought by ten leading record companies on their own behalf and on that of other members of the recorded music trade associations. The three websites each operate a substantial profit-making business in file sharing, especially in music....