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Category: Distribution

Directive on television and radio programmes

What is the current situation for online transmission and retransmission of television and radio programmes?

Broadcasters are increasingly offering their broadcasts online (for instance through their simulcasting or catch-up services). However, such online programming often remains unavailable in other Member States, even if there is interest abroad to access it. The clearance of rights for such uses can be particularly burdensome: a broadcaster needs to obtain authorisations from various rightholders, for different categories of works and other protected content, and separately for every Member State, where the programme will be available online.

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SWD IA on the EU copyright modernization – impacts of baseline and first options for press publishers

Baseline option

Without intervention at EU level, legal uncertainty in this sector is expected to increase and publishers’ bargaining position would further weaken. The loss of print revenues is not expected to be compensated by the increase of online revenues. Online revenue streams feature smaller margins, as the competition for digital advertisement revenues is tough and free-access press items are widely available. Moreover, access to news through smartphones is increasing every year. As advertising revenues linked to access through smartphones are lower than through computers, this evolution of news consumption would make overall revenues decrease.

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Commission fined Nike €12.5 million for restricting cross-border sales of merchandising products

This spring the European Commission has fined Nike €12.5 million for banning traders from selling licensed merchandise to other countries within the EEA. This restriction concerned merchandising products of some of Europe’s best-known football clubs and federations, for which Nike held the licence.

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Russian Facebook Vkontakte deploys anti-piracy filter

Russian social network Vkontakte has signed ant-piracy memorandum with book publishers and online stores. The aim of memo is similar to audio-visual memo signed by the Yandex & IT companies with audio-visual right holders (mostly Russian media companies making content for Russian TV). The memo supposed to anti-piracy checking of book content before the downloading.

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Commission fines Sanrio €6.2 million for restricting cross-border sales of merchandising products featuring Hello Kitty characters

The European Commission has fined Sanrio €6.2 million for banning traders from selling licensed merchandise to other countries within the EEA. This restriction concerned products featuring Hello Kitty or other characters owned by Sanrio.

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Survey shows Europeans are well aware of rules against unjustified geo-blocking

Seven months after new rules against unjustified geo-blocking began to apply, general consumer awareness of the new rules against restrictions for online shopping and cross-border sales is already high. A Eurobarometer survey shows that just a few months after the new rules on geo-blocking started to apply, 50% of EU citizens are generally aware of EU action to tackle unjustified discrimination by traders.

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Russian authorities want to track consumption of content and advertisements in internet

They want exactly know what the people like, what they consume and how internet platforms can influence them. The task is not so simple, but this idea has been discussed with major media and IT companies. The executives from Russian president’s administration and relevant officers discuss idea to create the single and unified system able to truck each view of content or advertising by the internet user in Russia. The major Russian television and internet companies have been involved in these discussions, but there is no final idea how such tracking would be organized and deployed.

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First challenging of theatrical distribution of movies in constitutional court

Russian movie theatrical distributor has filed complaint to Russian constitutional court in order to challenge the rules for theatrical distribution. The distributor believes these rules are of censorship nature. The complaint states on violation of freedom and rights by the actions of Russian ministry of culture (MinCult). MinCult has the rights to shift release dates almost of any film in Russia or repeal the permission for theatrical distribution at all.

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Impact assessment on the modernisation of EU copyright rules – rights in publications

Publishers are increasingly facing difficulties in relation to the digital exploitation of, and the enforcement of rights in, press publications such as newspapers and magazines. The changes to the way copyright-protected content is distributed and consumed in the digital environment have affected press publications in a specific way. The publishing industry is in the middle of a shift from print to digital.

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Russian deputies proposed to create monopoly for distribution of TV content in internet

Publicly available channels are to be distributed through so called “one window” in internet according to the new recently proposed draft law. Other web-sites, which don’t participate in “one window scheme”, are to be blocked. There is already the candidate to be such “one window” operator. The draft law aims to create the single system of legal distribution for 20 publicly available channels. This system should be launched from 2020.

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