European champions
The case of the pub landlady who was showing live Premier League football in her pub via a Greek broadcaster, which was much cheaper than Sky, and who was thus subject to legal action from the Premier League, has been ruled on by the European Court of Justice.
Karen Murphy, landlady of the Red, White and Blue pub in Portsmouth, brought the matter to the ECJ's attention when she got a legal letter last year. The case hinges on whether it's within EU law to prohibit people from buying services from only domestic suppliers, and additionally what the copyright implications are for broadcasting this content to third parties.
The ECJ ruling today is only in Murphy's favour to some degree, but seems to set legal precedent that is potentially even more significant than defined by the original parameters of the case. In summary, the ECJ has ruled that national laws which prohibit the import and sale of foreign premium TV decoder cards cannot be justified under European law. You can read the full ruling here.
Furthermore, exclusive licenses that prohibit the supply of decoder cards to people outside a specific country run contrary to competition law. And the Premier League doesn't even own the footie matches in terms of copyright - only the graphics, logos, highlights, etc that the Premier League embellishes the coverage with.
The only good news for the Premier League, Sky and footballers' salaries is that showing the footie in a pub constitutes a ‘communication to the public' for which the permission of the copyright holder is required. So, in principle, as long as the Premier League saturates the coverage it makes available to all broadcasters with sufficient branded crap, it can still enforce its will on pub landlords.
Where this leaves things regarding domestic viewing, however, is still very much up in the air. This ruling seems to say there's nothing to stop any of us paying for cheaper foreign broadcasts if we want and, presumably, the Premier League and its biggest customer - Sky - will appeal this as far as they can. We had yet to hear back from Sky following a request for comment at time of writing.
