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The legality of watching UK TV outside of the UK


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Over the years this has been discussed at lengths on our forum and nobody previously has ever managed to get any clear and concise answers from any of the UK broadcasting companies. Martin963 gave a link in the thread about the Astra 2F satellite to the BBC blog on the subject. There were loads of comments at the end including the typical Expat comment "I paid by licence fee for 60 years and feel I have the right to watch the BBC in Spain". After many such rants and towards the end of the comments (some 4 pages of them) the BBC, through a lady called Alix Pryde, decided it time to put some of this to bed and answered many of the questions asked from the BBC's point of view.

Anyway on to the questions and answers, there are no copyright restrictions on this information. I can't put a link because the way their comments system works you can't link to specific posts.

I can see that my post has prompted a lot of interest, strong feelings, and a number of important questions. I’d like to address these questions because I think this will help explain why we seek to confine the distribution of our UK Public services (eg, our domestic TV channels) to audiences within the UK.

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A distinction has to be drawn between the need for a broadcaster to affirm that a programme can only be seen inside its home territory and the duties of a viewer who is able to receive a signal outside that territory.

This isn't the viewer's problem, it is only the problem of the broadcaster. If a signal supposed only to be watched in Britain can be obtained in Spain, then anyone is free to watch it. The contractual relationship is between the originator of the programme material and the broadcaster, the viewer is not a party.

The broadcaster has a contractual obligation to restrict reception to its own territory. If a viewer outside that territory can receive the transmission, he under no obligation not to watch it, and commits no offence, criminal or civil, if he does watch it.

I made quick perusals of the Broadcasting Act, Wireless Telegraphy Act etc some time ago and to the best of my recollection these are concerned with transmission only.

 

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I think there are several forces at work here and some take president over the rest.

At the top of the tree is the "Agreement Between Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the British Broadcasting Corporation" which as best as I can tell taking in to account the changes in departmental name over the years has been there since the inception of the BBC and is simply update from time to time. This says, according to Alix Pryde, that with a few specifically named channels "Government prohibits the BBC from broadcasting BBC One etc. into countries other than the UK. It’s a condition under which we enjoy the privilege of licence fee funding.".

The next thing is what is now called Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) which again according to Alix Pryde says "if a channel is licensed by a regulator in one EU state then that is good enough for all EU states". This means if you can receive say the BBC1 in another EU country you are not doing anything illegal.

Of course the first part is only to do with the BBC which is governed by government with whom it has a contract. How the independent broadcasters stand in all this I don't have a clue.

Below are the links to the AVMSD information if anyone is interest, both the original and the recent update.

Original - http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/tvwf/index_en.htm

Update - http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/avms/index_en.htm

One thing I did notice however is that the section referred to by Alix Pryde in the agreement between the government and the BBC namely 75 (2) says

75. Licence fee funding and grants from Government Departments

(1) The Secretary of State shall pay to the BBC out of money provided by Parliament sums

equal to the whole of the net Licence Revenue or such lesser sums as the Secretary of

State may, with the consent of the Treasury, determine.

(2) The BBC may use sums paid to it under paragraph (1) to fund any activities properly carried on by the BBC except—

(a) those carried on for the purposes of the World Service, any Commercial Service, any

service of a description mentioned in paragraph (7), or any service aimed primarily at users outside the UK;

(b) any which are carried on for the purposes of a television, radio or online service which is wholly or partly funded by advertisements, subscription, sponsorship, payper-view system or any other alternative means of finance, unless the Secretary of State has given prior written approval.

Which unless I am being thick is not what she says it is so one can only draw ones own conclusions. Even if she has misquoted the source and we assume she is correct in that the BBC channels are only for UK broadcast I can see that to safeguard this the BBC would wish to use the UK spot beam on these new satellites.

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My problem was always with getting SKY tv in France. They said that they could not have contracts with people who lived abroad, something was cited to do with copyright, or some such thing. And yet, SKY themselves, crowed on a broadcast when the Football World cup was held in France that the british team who was staying at La Baule had been given SKY TV.

As far as I am concerned, if it was not illegal for these overpaid, xxxxxx, xxxxx football players, then it was not for the rest of us.

The BBC, well french friends used to get the overseas version years ago via their french tv satellite contract, as they would show it off to me when I was at their house.

 

 

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On the BBC point that also occurred to me Idun.  There are at least 2 channels - BBC World and another that escapes me just now - that are designed for broadcast outside of the UK and I am less than sure now how that fits with the BBCspeak that was posted by Q that said they were legally obliged to keep broadcasts within the UK by their charter.

 

Incidentally I believe Sky also set up Sky TV for their TdF bike team - TeamSky.

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I think it is really worth comparing again what the BBC spokeswoman says and what the law says.

The spokeswoman puts it like this:

"the Government prohibits the BBC from broadcasting BBC One etc. into countries other than the UK"

and the law says:

"The BBC may use sums paid to it ... to fund any activities properly carried on by the BBC except .... any service aimed primarily at users outside the UK"

So the BBC couldn't beam services to France and Spain that were tailored for French and Spanish audiences (or expats in France or Spain). But they don't seem to be under even the slightest obligation to try to restrict the number of people in France and Spain who can receive their broadcasts. It's pretty obvious that the BBC's normal broadcasts are all aimed primarily (the key word here) at users in the UK.

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I found the information by accident when I was researching more information on the Astra situation because basically as a keen rugby supporter I didn't want to loose out on the Six Nations this year as not all matches are shown on French TV.

When I spotted the information I posted I thought that this was the first time the BBC had actually given some real tangible information about the issue of receiving their broadcasts outside the UK. Seeing as I can remember this subject coming up more than once over the years and that many, including myself, had speculated on many reasons why you can't get a Sky subscription outside the UK (there was no FTA satellite availability back then) and subsequently BBC there was never any real tangible information.

Since the subject was last debated years ago regulations have changed within the EU we now have a definitive situation in that if you can receive BBC1 etc outside the UK then even though the channels are supposed to be only available to those within the UK under EU law you are doing nothing wrong or illegal. We also have a definitive reason why years ago, before the new EU law changes, you should not have been watching the BBC channels which was for one simple reason i.e. they were for the UK only as per the BBC and government charter or whatever you want to call it. In actual fact our theory previously about why it was 'illegal' was because of copyright etc was actually wrong. It was a much simpler reason. Then just as now you were hardly going to get a bod from the BBC knocking on your door here in France to tell you off or whatever.

I just found it interesting and some of those that were around when the subject was originally debated might also find it interesting to know the exact reasons why things were as they were back then. For newer people it also helps explain why the UK is getting a much tighter beam on the new Astra range of satellites.

Something else I discovered along the way is that there is another new Astra being launched in 2014, Astra 2G, which I read somewhere on my Internet travels will be for Sky and it's subscription channels. It will have the same footprint according to SES as 2E and 2F, so vitually every single UK TV channel will be for the UK only.

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Don't forget that from the moment the BBC domestic TV services went up onto satellite (1998) and the date they went free to air (2003) they were encrypted.   This was "another method" of restricting their reception to Britain,  because to get a card (whether it was a Sky card or a "Solus" card (another form of Sky card)) you needed an address in Britain.   And - for whatever reason the BBC cares to use at any time - this restriction was needed because between those dates the BBC were carried by Sky on Astra 2A and 2B,  whose footprints covered almost all of Europe.

The free to air break through came  soon after Astra 2D was launched.   This was at first the "poor man's" satellite,  and everyone laughed when ITV ended up there because there was no room on the "powerful" satellites.    But Greg Dyke at the BBC saw a way of saving money AND delaying any government moves to introduce subscription payments onto the BBC regime,   and grabbed his chance.   Using Astra 2D with its officially published "tight beam" was enough to satisfy the requirements that the programmes should be restricted to the British Isles. 

One can speculate as much as one likes as to WHY the BBC feel they can't let their signal spill willy-nilly across Europe.   To be honest I don't find it that interesting.   And the BBC have in fact used several different arguments over the years.   What Alix Pryde (who may well never have done a real broadcasting job in her life - I don't know (*)) has written seems to be the current "reason".   But a free to air signal is a free to air signal,  and has been said earlier in the thread if you can pick it up then it's OK for you to use it.   What isn't OK is to bust through encryption systems with pirate cards,   and what isn't OK (at least as far as Sky's T&C are concerned) is to take the card abroad for use there.  

I think Alix Pryde is simply trying to marshall together the reasons to justify her (correct) argument that the BBC is not under any obligation to provide signals to people outside Britain.   So if one is unfortunate enough to be about to lose the BBC then it's tough,  whether one's paid the licence fee all one's life or not.   But if one can pick up the free to air signal then one can watch it.   Neither France nor Britain are police states - it might be different if one wanted to watch the BBC in Iran.

AFAIK it wasn't illegal to pick up the police broadcasts on the FM band in Britain (98 - 104 MHz) when they used that section of the spectrum.   What was illegal was to act on what one heard.   (At least I believe that was the situation).

I happily watch French TV via Fransat and TNTsat whilst back in Britain.   And I sleep easy in my bed,  even though the envelope the card came in tells me I shouldn't.    Je m'en foute.   It's only television after all.....

(*)   I'm not trying to be rude about Ms Pryde.   But I'm thinking "Tim Davey" here,  who I seem to recall blazed his way up the BBC on the back of being a marketing guy for Pepsi.   Hardly the sort of qualification that impresses this ex BBC employee.   But then I'm so so out of date.....

Quillan - you mention 2G.   As you know there's little need to electrically restrict the coverage of programmes that are encrypted anyway as most of the viewers will be in Britain with British-address registered cards (and Sky can quantify roughly how many aren't in this situation).    But I suspect that it's more a case of designing 2G to have restricted footprints in order to allow frequency re-use,  that is to say that you can double (or more) the capacity of the 28.2 deg orbital slot by using the same frequencies to cover say Britain and West Africa,  or France and Romania.   Provided the beams are tight enough the area of mutual interference is steered onto somewhere where it doesn't matter between the two targets,  but within the specified service areas there is no mutual interference problem,   and as a result you can increase your carriage income without having to open up a new orbital slot.  

This may be one of the problems for viewers in Spain in the future,  where however big the dish they install they still won't get British programmes because there will be interference from the adjacent service area ruining their reception.

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