AVMS agreed December 2007

The European Parliament formally approved without amendments the Council's common position on the new Audiovisual Media Services without frontiers Directive.

Ofcom paper on convergence

In preparation for Monica Arino's seminar Wednesday at 12, you might find this new paper interesting: http://www.culture.gov.uk/Convergence/submissions/seminar1/ofcom_update4feb08.pdf

Council of Europe paper on jurisdiction

Very useful paper: http://www.obs.coe.int/online_publication/transfrontier_tv.pdf.en

Greater European Regulatory cooperation promised

Commissioner Viviene Reding hosts a meeting to discuss closer cooperation in view of the Al Manar case.

Short extracts and viewers' rights

The 'Right to Information' and Digital Broadcasting - About Monsters, Invisible Men, and the Future of European Broadcasting Regulation by Natali Helberger - focuses on viewers' right to consume rather than market arguments from economics.

Reading for Week 10, 21 March

Two pieces to collect at the end of the week-
first an article by Anna Herold about sports rights and public service TV,
second a quite dense and comlicated article about essential facilities and competition law, with a lot of media references - read only if you really want to take that question!

Anna is the legal advisor at the European Commission on the new Directive....

Competition law and IP

How Battlestar Gallactica killed broadcast TV

Overview with some interesting points

new report on advertising covering 34 countries, and the Commission's 5th Implementation Report

Both available here.

Market for TV Sports Rights

Interesting 2001 article from Norway.

Subjects and reading for Week 9, 14 March

We will mainly deal with the Premium Programming and Competition Law issues, but with a sideways look at media pluralism and diversity.
1. Read Cowie and Marsden (1999) on conditional access - don't spend too long on the standards part (rather technical).
2. Read Marsden for the Council of Europe esp. Part 3 on 'must carry'.
3. Read the articles on movies, football, especially Ungerer's 2003 article.
4. Those interested in state aid might want to read ahead on Eurovision/EBU - a case dealt with in the first blog entry:http://www.obs.coe.int/oea_publ/iris/iris_plus/iplus10_2005.pdf.en

70% of UK households have digital TV...

...and the World cup will drive this to 80% by this time next year, reports BBC News

Interesting take on IPTV and 'geo-coding' for DRM

But he is selling his open source solution...

Flash / Google AdSense video / VW ad

- Alltime classic flash animation from Joel Veitch on rathergood.com - independant woman
- Google's new adsense video adverts - first example described here
- An example of an advert being posted as content (NSFW)

Additional question requested

Is European competition law a sufficient tool for ensuring plurality and/or diversity in the broadcasting media? Refer specifically to either: [1] state aid case law involving public service broadcasters (specifically Eurovision and by extension Altmark), or [2] Article 81/82/merger case law.

Kappa Mikey: Flash animation

A piece in the New York Times Friday about a new show "Kappa Mikey" from The Animation Collective. What makes it interesting is that it is done in Flash.
Doing animation in Flash is nothing new nor is the idea of simplified production (as with South Park or even Clutch Cargo nearly half a century ago). Flash content doesn't take much network capacity because it is coded mostly as objects. It avoids the whole the need to compress - it is a compressed format.

Proposed essay titles

1. Does the distinction between linear and non-linear definitions for audiovisual services make sense in view of national and European legislation and proposed legislation and case law?
2. 'Advertisers should take advantage of the deregulation of the Internet to avoid all TVWF rules'. Do you agree? Has case law and legislative reform already removed most obstacles to new advertising techniques?
3. Does the Country of Origin rule truly apply to audiovisual services? Explain with regard to any or all of the following: [1] the rules for listed sports events in TVWF; [2] the Convention on Transfrontier Television; [3] the proposed 'codification' of the case law of the European Court of Justice.
4. Is a competitive pan-European broadcast market possible? Explain with regard to case law and legislation in either: [i] essential facilities; or [ii] programme rights.

Reading for 28 February

1. Blog what you can find in terms of new Video-on-Demand or other 'non-linear' services on the Internet - that will cause problems for the push-pull idea that the ECJ and European Commission are committed to.
Here are examples:
http://www.vingo.tv
http://www.three.co.uk/explore/services3/detailLifestyle.omp?cid=1130772971819
http://www.fabchannel.com/
2. Read the Jacubowicz article that you can collect from Hayley.
3. Look at Annex 1 of the RAND report.

Reading for 21 February

There is a lot to pick up from the Graduate Office - but its all relatively small articles:
[1] The Directive itself is there, a consolidated version from 1997.
[2] You will have the slides from this week's lecture.
[3] There are 3 Commission documents on the European cultural provisions in Articles 4/5.
[4] There is a set of notes on how to define broadcasting within services by a top Commission official - to be discussed.
[5] There is an academic article by the excellent young Amsterdam-based Irish academic Tarlach McGonagle - examining how broadcasting is regarded on the Internet.

If you really want to read something else, try Carole Tongue, Chapter 5 in Marsden and Verhulst (1999).

Jurisdiction and Television

Very useful background presentation from the Association of Commercial TV for the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities.