Murdoch's TV Pirates........

t c

Anyone who has a SKY subscription and uses pay TV might want to watch Panorama at 8.30 on BBC1.

Koloman

Just started now.

excollier

Wow, now we know how low some will stoop!
Sky/NDS go ballistic when anyone tries to break their cosy (not so) little monopolies.
I had OnDigital when it launched and then ITV Digital, great setup, to replace Sky analogue, sad to see it go when it did.

recyclebin

I missed this. Anyone care to summarize it for me?

Ranicand

recyclebin wrote: »

I missed this. Anyone care to summarize it for me?

MOD EDIT: Deleted.

Edit two of his sons were directors of NDS.

excollier

Maybe you should add allegedly to that.
Their lawyers are savage attack dogs, allegedly.

Zardoz

Ranicand wrote: »

Deleted .

Hasnt all of this been common knowledge for the last 3 years ?

Minstrel27

At least a lot of people have tonight learned of it.

icdg

Can I first put my mod hat on and can I ask people not to repeat allegations that a particular company or person may have committed a criminal offence as if it were fact. That important "allegedly" word might help but may not be enough.

The programme's repeated on Friday at 1:25am on BBC One and Sunday at 8:30pm on the BBC News Channel.

There were a lot of reasons ONdigital collapsed. The hacking of Mediaguard was one of the contributing factors, but ultimately paying over the odds for Football League rights was what killed it (although in my view it just accelerated the decline of an unsustainable business model anyway).

Popeleo

Here's a link to the story on the BBC News website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723

(As per Mod's request - please do not quote the content on this website)


I haven't seen the programme yet but the allegations seem quite serious.
Was there any mention on how this, on top of the NOTW mess, might possibly effect their right to hold UK broadcasting licences?

Guy:Incognito

Did they give any info on who was hacking the sky cards and distributing them around the same time? Guess not.

I have Sky and will continue to. What Murdoch or any of his companies get up to doesnt interest me as long as programs I want to watch keep appearing on the EPG.

STB

I haven't seen the program yet but will be interested to see what Panorama turned up.

In a totally unrelated news story.....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078546/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/pay-tv-piracy-flap-intensifies/

And just to make it balanced, Chris Tarnovsky gave a interview and video insight to Wired back in 2008.

Ronan|Raven

Not much new in the show last night.

buggane

I disagree there was plenty that was 'new' not least the broadcast of comment from the principles involved at the time. This does flesh out a lot of the rumour that has surrounded the issue.

With an Ofcom enquiry underway the BBC timing was probably just right and I am sure we have not heard the last of this.

Anyway glad I saw the comment about it on here because I had missed it completely but have since watched it on iplayer.

moro_original

icdg wrote: »

There were a lot of reasons ONdigital collapsed. The hacking of Mediaguard was one of the contributing factors, but ultimately paying over the odds for Football League rights was what killed it (although in my view it just accelerated the decline of an unsustainable business model anyway).

Not according to the directors of the company.

Guy:Incognito wrote:

I have Sky and will continue to. What Murdoch or any of his companies get up to doesnt interest me as long as programs I want to watch keep appearing on the EPG.

What a world we live in, where some people place watching TV over a sense of ethics.

t c

What surprises me is that BBC and other National TV stations actually PAY SKY to broadcast their programmes (I believe BBC pay £10m). Surely SKY is just a retailer selling a service to the public, so it should be buying it's products, ie, tv broadcasts.
That may be ok for some of the imported stations to get a platform, but the likes of BBC, UTV, RTE and any other "national" station should refuse as they have other means to transmit, Freeview, Freesat etc. I am sure that if the BBC were to supply and install a Freeview/Freesat box in every UK house they would have change from the £10m and it would only be a once off payment, not annually.
I thought that monopolies were illegal, and SKY is a monopoly, in my opinion, as no-one can show any popular sport without first negotiating with SKY as they appear to hold the rights to nearly every sport, (see what has happened F1..)
Any TV company should be able to approach any sporting body and negotiate it's own deal.
Anyway, I am sure there are a lot of SKY fans out there, but I am entitled to my opinion and get on my soap-box if I want to........
Also, if the allegations in the programme are proved and Murdoch is found guilty, surely it will be illegal for tv companies to pay money to a criminal organisation??????

TC

Sponge Bob

The allegations that Murdoch controlled entities connived and were complicit in efforts to discredit and break encryption used by other carriiers or provided to other carriers by themselves has been repeated elsewhere with bells and whistles added.

The Australian Financial Review has a lot of articles ( www.afr.com )

http://www.afr.com/p/business/marketing_media/covert_action_costs_directv_millions_yXzhccDt4KKIVhAwqkjzqO

Here is but part of one story.

News Corporation subsidiary NDS operated one of the biggest pay TV piracy operations on record in North America in partnership with the US government, in an undercover operation that went spectacularly wrong.
NDS ran the operation in 1998 with US Customs without telling its biggest client, the US satellite broadcaster DirecTV. The operation cost the broadcaster millions in lost revenue.
After an earlier bungled NDS operation, DirecTV had insisted that NDS agree to a moratorium on running any undercover operation in North America without DirecTV’s consent.
NDS sidestepped this agreement because the operation involved a law enforcement agency, and did not tell DirecTV when it ran out of control.
NDS had a multimillion-dollar contract providing DirecTV with the conditional access system used to control who could access its programs.

Thats only a fragment of the coverage.

watty

BBC do not pay Sky for Broadcast. They only pay to be on Sky EPG. They pay Broadcast costs direct to the Satellite Operators. Sky have no Satellites in Europe.

IMO Sky ought to pay them.

buggane

A follow up on this on Channel 4 news this evening it looks as if the story is getting legs!