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The High Court has decided that the operators of The Pirate Bay website and its users are both guilty of infringing the copyright of rightsholders in the music industry. This means that internet service providers can now be forced to block their customers’ access to the site. The case was brought by major record companies against the six major UK internet service providers. The Pirate Bay is a website which enables users to search for and download copyrighted material, including music and films, and the record companies sought an injunction from the court to force the service providers to block...

Following the October 2011 preliminary ruling of the European Court of Justice (joined cases C-403/08 and C-429/08, see IRIS 2011-9/2), the High Court of England and Wales, in a decision handed down on 3 February 2012, has now confirmed that pub landlords in the UK can legally broadcast FA Premier League football matches using foreign satellite decoders, providing they can obtain a clean feed of the games, they broadcast sound during live play only and do not charge an entrance fee. The decision concerned the liability of six publicans (the “Madden defendants”) for using decoder cards in order...

The UK Supreme Court has now determined the final appeal in the “Sugar” case relating to the application of the Freedom of Information Act to the BBC (see IRIS 2010-3/25 and IRIS 2009-4/15). The BBC is listed as an organisation covered by the Freedom of Information Act that provides public rights of access to official information, but on in relation to information held “for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature.” In 2005 Mr Sugar had applied under the Act for disclosure of the Balen Report, an internal management report relating to the question of whether BBC coverage of the...

On 18 January 2012, Ofcom upheld ATVOD’s Determinations that three Viacom companies - Nickelodeon UK Limited, The Paramount Partnership and MTV Networks Europe - were the responsible persons for VOD services featuring their content on the Virgin Media platform. The issue concerns Section 368A of the Communications Act 2003. This defines ‘editorial responsibility’ which, in turn, triggers regulatory responsibility. A service is only an On Demand Programme Service (ODPS) if it satisfies the defining criteria in section 368A of the Act. Key amongst these for the purpose of the appeals are in sections...

On 11 January 2012 the English High Court overturned a decision by the Justice Minister preventing the BBC from interviewing a suspected terrorist who has been held in prison for seven years without trial. Babar Ahmad has been held in prison pending extradition to the United States since 2004, and is currently awaiting a final decision on his case by the European Court of Human Rights, which had ruled in 2007 that he should not be extradited until it had considered his application. The BBC and a journalist had sought permission to interview him in prison; this was originally granted but with audio...