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The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the Competition Commission and the Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise requiring BSkyB to reduce its 17.9% holding in ITV plc to below 7.5%, in rejection of an appeal of the decision of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (for earlier discussions of this long-running saga, see IRIS 2007-10: 14/23, IRIS 2008-3: 13/19 and IRIS 2008- 10: 12/18). The basis for the decision to require divestment was that the acquisition of the shares had created a “relevant merger situation” which resulted in a “substantial lessening of competition” under the Enterprise...

The BBC Trust, which approves new BBC ventures, has conditionally approved Project Canvas. This is an open joint venture between the BBC and five other partners, including the other UK public service broadcasters, to develop a common standard permitting a viewer with a broadband connection to watch on-demand services, such as BBC iPlayer, the ITV Player and other internet content, on a television set. The content will be accessed through a set-top box attached to the internet; no subscription will be payable except for the broadband connection. The Trust conducted a public value assessment of the...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has announced after consultation the arrangements to be made for regulating video on demand services under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive and implementing the requirements of the UK Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2009 (see IRIS 2010-1: 1/24). In earlier consultation the UK Government had made it clear that it intended to limit the scope of UK regulation to the narrow range of services falling within the scope of the AVMS Directive and only to include services which include programmes similar to those available on television broadcast services....

On 12 November 2009, the Coroners and Justice Bill became law. Section 73 provides for the “Abolition of common law libel offences etc.” Specifically, it states that “The following offences under the common law of England and Wales and the common law of Northern Ireland are abolished— (a) the offences of sedition and seditious libel; (b) the offence of defamatory libel; (c) the offence of obscene libel.” It should be noted that this provision only applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Eight years ago the British courts decided in favour of a disclosure order in the case of Interbrew SA v. Financial Times and others. The case concerned an order against four newspapers (FT, The Times, The Guardian and The Independent) and the news agency Reuters to deliver up their original copies of a leaked and (apparently) partially forged document about a contemplated takeover by Interbrew (now: Anheuser Bush InBev NV) of SAB (South African Breweries). In a judgment of 15 December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section) came to the conclusion that this disclosure order constituted...