Benny,The following was taken from the den,it is in respect to a court case that had been taken out against a landlady who was showing saturday football in her pub with an official subscription card.Makes for interesting reading!!!!!The caes against the Pub landlady was in fact thrown out of court last week & I have seen an edited copy of the ruling ( I have this at work & will post it if anyone is interested). From what I can see, it was thrown out on the grounds that a subscription card was purchased legally & therefore the Landlady had done nothing dishonest. The judge went on to say that this is not to say that this will be the case in future! (as in the past there have been prosecutions where a pirate card was found). This has nothing realy to do with
sky from a legal point of view as they are vary rarely licensed to show a live 3pm match. It comes down to the FA & what they are arguing at the moment is that cards purchased in Europe are in fact breaching their copyright & depriving them of income if shown in mainland UK. On the other side of the coin, none of these European cards have been made illegal (proscribed), all of these service providers have paid royalties to the FA, some of them are sold on a world wide basis with no regard for territorial distribution rights & as was mentioned earlier, you can't copyright a time!!!. At the moment, if you purchase from a UK based company & get a proper vat receipt, then you can be seen to have "acted in good faith". Recently several UK dealers have been visited by Trading standards, the Police & Fact, We all await the outcome, but I suspect as in the past it will fade away until the FA are willing to spend a lot of money & issue a writ. At present they are paying FACT & have taken no one to court to my knowledge on their own..
We all just have to wait & see..