custard,
Did you know ‘little C5’ was in fact the first national UK terrestrial channel to broadcast on satellite, long before the BBC.
It broadcast in analogue from 19.2 throughout the late 90’s, soft scrambled in videocrypt. This encryption meant that anyone with a truly FTA only analogue receiver could not decrypt it, but anyone with a videocrypt enabled receiver could watch it without a card. The idea being that videocrypt receivers would only be sold in the UK and so would prevent people in Europe watching channel 5 (as they didn’t have the rights to broadcast there). This might seem off topic but this rather clumsy and unsuccessful attempt at limiting channel 5 reception in europe shows that they are committed to encryption, they did everything they could, apart from issuing free cards, to keep channel 5 in the UK long before the BBC ever made it to satellite. Channel 5 signed a 5 year renewal of their encryption contract with Sky last year (at level of prices the BBC refused to pay) so unless they change their contract it will stay scrambled for quite some time.
I don’t mean to attack you, but I don’t see the BBC in the same pioneering light as you do, they saved £85 million by not signing with Sky, something which is often overlooked, but I am glad they did save the money, that £85million can go towards better programmes etc etc.
As for it being legal to watch BBC and Ch4 etc in other countries, well it already is legal to watch BBC abroad if you are lucky enough to be in the footprint. (Anything broadcast FTA in eurpoe can be watched legally, freely, in any country, regardless of weather the broadcaster has permission from the copyright holder to broadcast in that country). As for ITV, channel 4 and 5 following it isn’t a case of simply European law changing, these channels (and the BBC) don't buy the copyright rights to broadcast to Europe, only to the UK, if they were forced to allow their programmes to watchable in all member states then they may be forced to pay more to the copyright holders of the programmes they show, so the end result could be the BBC saving £85m in encryption and spending it on increased copyright costs.
As for the number of people receiving BBC I agree with Rolfw, I expect it has gone down, it was never hard to get a digibox and FTV card, even people with no direct connection to the UK and with no UK address could get them easily. But getting bigger dishes and having to subscribe to Sky or try and get a FTV card when they are/were available is more complicated and much more expensive.