23 July 2003
The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) announces that the High Court in Hong Kong has entered judgment in favour of the plaintiffs in civil actions against the five remaining defendants for importing and trading in unauthorized satellite TV signal decoding equipment.
In his ruling, the Judge granted an injunction prohibiting the defendants from trading in unauthorised smart cards and associated apparatus stating that such use was offensive and must be stopped.
In the Judgment the Court held that the defendants had breached Hong Kongs copyright law and had no licence to deal in the plaintiffs broadcasts. The defendants were found to have been importing, possessing and supplying apparatus obtained in territories outside Hong Kong designed to infringe the plaintiffs copyright.
With this action we have won an historic decision which unequivocally signals that our industry is tackling piracy which is costing our businesses hundreds of millions of US dollars each year, said Mr Twiston Davies. This was our first action in Hong Kong and new actions will soon be underway in other markets such as the Philippines and Thailand. This is vital work.
The plaintiffs named in the actions are STAR, CNN, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, ESPN STAR Sports, Discovery Networks Asia and NGC Network Asia.
21 July 2003
The UKs commercial TV channel Five has agreed a two year deal with BBC Broadcast to provide a second-line playout and channel management disaster recovery service. BBC Broadcast will play a vital role in Five’s disaster recovery providing longer term channel playout services for both main and regional feeds across all broadcasting platforms.
Initially, provision of the service will be from BBC Broadcasts current base at Television Centre but will operate from its new, purpose-built, digital Broadcast Centre in the new Media Village at White City, West London, when it opens later this year. The Broadcast Centre is highly resilient and served by two power stations, and also has the capability to manage activities remotely, storing content on multiple back-up servers.
“BBC Broadcast is able to meet the needs of all broadcasters and the deal with Five reflects their confidence in our ability to provide a highly reliable disaster recovery service for their complex channel, reacting quickly to schedule changes, related advertisement issues and encompassing regional and live feeds,” said John Pink, director of marketing, sales and client services, BBC Broadcast.
21 July 2003
Solid State Logic, the worlds leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles for broadcast, post, music and film facilities, has announced that Steve Zaretsky has been named Vice President Broadcast, U.S. and Canada. He will be responsible for serving all of SSLs broadcast customers within these regions. Since joining SSL last year, Zaretskys performance in leading the East Coast Broadcast Division of SSL has been a great success. His increased new role will allow Zaretsky to focus on the growing number of facilities turning to SSL for digital broadcast audio consoles.
21 July 2003
DW-Radio has won two silver medals and a bronze in the Environment, National and International Affairs and Science and Technology categories of the New York Festivals radio programming competition.
The Silver Medal in the Environment category was awarded to the English Service for a feature series: Indigenous Peoples: Partners in Conservation, presenting projects on all continents of the world aimed at helping indigenous peoples to protect their traditional lifestyles and the bio-diversity of their environments. The series was made in cooperation with the Worldwide Fund for Nature, WWF
DWs International Co-productions Department was awarded a silver medal by the United Nations for Living with the Past: Ruanda in Search of Reconciliation and Justice.
The bronze medal in the Science and Technology category was awarded to Deutsche Welles English Service for a feature series: Green Development: The Path to a Sustainable Future. The series presents projects supported by Germanys Society for Technical Co-operation, the GTZ, to provide developing countries with innovative technical solutions to environmental problems.
16 July 2003
US-based Iranian TV channels have been suffering from the presence of an unidentified signal which is causing disruption and interference. The affected stations are in a multiplex of channels targetted mainly at Iran.
The channels potentially affected, according to the Lyngsat satellite information web site, are CTI TV; Da Ai TV; MAC TV; NITV-National Iranian TV; Iran TV Network; Tapesh TV; VOA TV Persian service; Channel One; Azadi TV; Jaam-e-jam International (an Iranian state external TV service); AFN Farsi Net (radio).
