Request for BBC Contact - OT

[RS]

Like Jim I hope that the EU will outlaw national copyright licences on the 
ground that they partition the single market.  I do find it disturbing that 
now this is on the horizon there have been moves in the opposite direction. 
If you look at the footprints of Hotbird 13 and Astra at 19°E there is a 
kink in the contours showing that the beam has been modified to include the 
Canaries so those satellites can be received there with a 1m or 1.2m dish. 
There are also transponders on Astra 2 which can be received there with a 
similar size dish.  However the main broadcast channels have been moved to 
transponders with narrower and narrower beams.  Those channels have not been 
able to be received in the Canaries for 4 or 5 years.  Since January 2015 
they have not been able to be received in southern Spain.  Shortly after 
that change steps were taken to prevent VPNs circumventing the geographic 
restrictions on iPlayer.

In the case of films, copyright belongs to the companies which made the 
films.  However a lot of material has been commissioned by the BBC.  In the 
11 years between the Whitford report and the CDPA a fierce battle raged over 
the ownership of copyright in commissioned works.  In the end it was decided 
not to change the law.  Since then there has been at least one case in which 
the Court imposed a trust, so that the commissioner owned the copyright.  If 
that is right, the BBC may own the copyright in works it has commissioned. 
Who is the BBC?  The answer must be it is us, the licence fee payers.  The 
BBC Trust owns the copyright on trust for us.  We ought to be able to grant 
ourselves licences to watch and listen to the material we have paid for when 
we are on holiday elsewhere in Europe, and possible throughout the world.

As for region coding of DVDs, it is mainly a bluff.  I only have a few DVDs 
labelled Region 1, but none of them is region coded.  Of the Region 2 DVDs I 
have which I have looked at, the majority are not region coded.  One 
organisation which does code its DVDs as Region 2 is the BBC.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Jim web
To: s_byers666 at yahoo.co.uk ; get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org ; 
artisticforge at gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2016 9:15 AM
Subject: Re: Request for BBC Contact - OT

...

Personally, I am hoping that one result of us being in (and staying in!)
the EU will eventually fix this. As part of the aim for the 'free movement'
of goods, people, etc, the idea is that it should become illegal to limit
access on the basis of national or regional boundaries within the EU. i.e.
anyone in the EU could then pay the BBC license fee and get the same access
as those in the UK. Similarly other broadcasters would have to behave in
accord with the same basis. Hence operators like 'Sky', and vendors of
DVDs, etc, would not be allowed to divide their market on a per-country
basis. And IRP vendors would not be allowed to try to dictate to the BBC
where in the EU was allowed to have access. It would become an illegal
restraint on trade.
...