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5 December 2016Copyright

INTA Digital World: Sky issues warning over cross-border access

Enabling cross-border access to content in a way that is bad for consumers is a “dangerous game”, said Lutz Reulecke, senior vice president regulatory, public policy and youth protection at Sky Deutschland.

Speaking in a personal capacity at an  International Trademark Association conference on Friday, December 2, Reulecke explained that there could be difficulties in getting a licence to English-language content in non-English markets.

He added that portability is a clever piece of EU legislation, although providing portability is not the strongest business case.

David Fares, senior vice president of government affairs at 21st Century Fox (UK), and the keynote speaker, explained that there are two separate issues with regard to territoriality: portability of content, and cross-border access/pan-European licence.

“When it comes to portability, we as an industry need to be flexible. We have worked very constructively with the European Commission,” said Fares.

However, he warned that cross-border access is a “significantly larger challenge” for the industry.

This is especially true for independent European producers as they finance their works by granting pre-sale territorial rights to obtain financing in advance, explained Fares.

He added: “If they can’t grant an exclusive licence to a particular territory, content is just not going to be produced, which means less consumer choice at a higher price.

“That cannot be the objective of the European Commission in the Digital Single Market.”

Fares warned that portability can also be a back door to cross-border access, so the industry has been “working very hard to build in certain safeguards that prevent that from happening”.

This includes robust verification of a subscriber’s residency, to ensure the subscriber lives in the country where a service is being offered, and certain time limits. He added that the industry is “making good progress in coming up to that solution”.

INTA’s ‘Digital World Conference: Navigating the Digital Yellow Brick Road’ took place between December 1 and 2 in Brussels.

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