Unforeseen consequences

Returning to a story that has interested me for some time, earlier this week, Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy won an important EU ruling in her favour.

The case revolves around Mrs Murphy using a digital decoder from Greece to screen Premier League football games in her pub for a cheaper price than with UK football broadcaster Sky. Sky promptly took her to court when they found out six years ago under copyright infringement law.

However, Mrs Murphy took her case to the European Court of Justice who ruled that the way in which satellite broadcasters limit themselves to one country is against the freedom to provide services and for individuals in the European Union to choose the service providers they desire; thus, the prohibition on the sale of digital decoders is deemed unlawful. It is unprecedented for a national High Court to not enforce a ECJ ruling.

However, the ruling also pointed out that certain copyright infringements were also being made by Mrs Murphy and other decoder users in that whilst football is not covered by copyright law, graphics and sound and the whole branding used by companies such as Sky and ESPN are covered. Therefore, if pubs were to broadcast a match with this branding in it, they would be in breach of the law.

Quite simply, in the wake of this ruling, broadcasters could put a piece of their branding (a permanent graphic of a £ sign in the top corner perhaps) and thus a decoder user would be breaking copyright law.

I’ll not go into the footballing side of the ruling here (I may well do elsewhere in detail later this week) but on a side note of irony.

As one article notes and makes very clear, the main reason pubs broadcast football matches is that they pack pubs that are otherwise dying a rather slow and painful death. Anyone that’s been to a pub, say, on a Saturday at noon and a Thursday at the same time, it is clear to see that most of a pub’s revenue comes at the weekends when they show football from the hours of noon to about 10pm.

However, the ruling has made it a lot easier for football fans at home to get a digital decoder for themselves and use it instead of Sky to view football matches. Naturally, it is unlikely for a monolith like Sky to sue every single individual user of a decoder (if Sky’s copyright is infringed by use of the branding); apparently it’s not great for the marketing department to take millions of potential customers to court.

Anyway, that means that the opportunity for football fans to sit at home and watch matches is far greater as they can now afford to when prices for a digital decoder are up to a third the price of a Sky Sports subscription and booze from a supermarket of a similar price ratio.

Therefore, pubs, including Mrs Murphy’s, would get less income on their peak weekend times as more punters stay at home, thus hammering another nail into the pub coffin.

Do be careful what you wish for.