Petition to the European Parliament

georgekildare

Following earlier threads on this bulletin board, some of you may be interested that I have just submitted the attached petition to the European Parliament. I do this on the advice of several MEPs and EU officials. It is relevant to several of the constant themes on the Bulletin Board (e.g. the ITV, Channel 4 matter).

The petition point out that present practices of the satellite television industry (i) impede the rights of European citizens to free access to information (ii) are incompatible with the free European market (iii) discourage the free movement of labour within the Community

Further, the petition requests the EU Parliament to take the following specific actions to libereralise satellite television within the Community:

(i) Subscriptions to satellite television packages sold in any country of the EU should be available to consumers resident in all countries of the EU. Pricing should be uniform throughout the EU, taking account of contributions already made by some consumers to national television channels through national television license fees.

(ii) Satellite providers should be compelled to allow all programmes transmitted by them to be available to subscribers everywhere within the EU. All non-copyrighted material (e.g. news and current affairs programmes) should be accessible immediately.

(iii) The rules governing copyright across national borders should be amended as soon as possible to take account of satellite television. Each channel in the bouquet should be paid copyright fees by the satellite providers. Equitable copyright fees would take account of the number of subscribers to the satellite service, independent of location.

(e.g. If a terrestrial programme channel has purchased the copyright for a film within a particular member state, an additional amount would be paid to the film distributor by the satellite provider. This amount could be fixed as a fraction of the cost to the programme channel of the copyrighted material, with the fraction equal to the number of subscribers to the channel divided by the number of consumers that can receive the same programme terrestrially in the country of origin)

(iv) Satellite television providers should be prohibited from imposing restrictions on the design of receivers /decoders enabled to receive their transmitted programmes and from encouraging such restrictions through special subsidies.

(v) Consideration should be given to compelling the providers of satellite television to lease their infrastructure to competitors, who wish to deliver alternative programme bouquets, similar to the measures taken to curb monopolistic practices in the telecom industry.

Although I doubt if the petition will have any result during my lifetime, it has helped to get some of the irritation out of my system!

The petition is attached as a txt file. The Bulletin Board doesn't seem to be able to cope with a Word document.

Stiabhna

Hi George,

Well done! You have obviously put a lot of time and effort into the petition.

Let's hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

S.

Genghis

George,

I have read every word of your submission closely. Your argument is well made, and the points very clear. I believe you have made a very strong case. To cut to the chase - I'm well impressed!

If there is anything I can do to support you on this, please let me know. Would it be worthwhile for example to e-mail MEP's, Pat Cox etc., referring to or attaching a copy of your petition. Is there anything any of us on the boards can help with otherwise?

Well done again, you've raised my spirit on a cold, wet 'Summers' Monday morning in Ireland!

georgekildare

Very many thanks for your kind words Stiaphna and Genghis. I wrote the petition to get rid of my frustration after just purchasing my third satellite receiver through ebay!! (I have a normal one for Dutch and FTA programs, an "illegal" digibox with a BBC card for Sky UK and an "illegal" digibox for Sky Ireland.

There are probably many illegal cards going around in Brussels at present and it certainly couldn't hurt to email MEPs about the matter. I had previously emailed several Dutch and Irish MEPs with my gripe and it was on the advice of one of them (John Walls Cushnahan) that I submitted the petition. Also some of the civil servants sent me quite encouraging emails.

I am also sent copies of the petition to some Dutch newspapers, trying to get them interested in the question. A similar effort with the Irish media couldn't hurt.

If someone wants a properly formatted MS Word version, please email me on freedomsattv@hotmail.com.

Charles Slane

Well thought-out, well-reasoned, and well-written.

I'm well-impressed !!

Well done, georgekildare !!

SRB

Well done George, hope you at least get a reply that's as well researched !

byte

Great work George. I also hope your reply is a good one.