Digital TV sports rights distribution is a Europe-wide issue which highlights the differences between laws that were drawn up to govern copyright in the pre-digital age and those of the new digital technologies which facilitate content distribution.
“What you’re seeing is the difference between the technology ability to get anything from almost anywhere and a pre-digital territorial legal reality,” Robert Madelin, director general at the Directorate General for the Information Society of the European Commission, told i-Tech in an exclusive interview.
“The particular business configuration varies from country to country but the fundamental challenge is, as my Commissioner Neelie Kroes often says, that there is a single market for content but the problem is that it is illegal. When there is rapid technological change, when there are disruptive technologies, disruptive in a good sense, the law has difficulty to catch up. And society has to manage that tension. You can’t say ‘the law at all costs’ and you can’t say ‘technology at all costs’. At the same time the content aspects of intellectual property are a crucial enabler for the single market.”
Mr Madelin was reacting to a question about sports rights on Maltese digital TV where football fans have to subscribe to two different TV providers to watch the English and Italian football leagues and the Champion’s League. Two weeks ago this newspaper reported on how some Maltese football fans have resorted to questionable satellite TV viewing using particular satellite set-top boxes and internet to decode the encrypted signals which, legally, are not meant for viewing in Malta though they are perfectly accessible locally.
Mr Madelin said he can’t talk about the specific case in Malta because the Maltese authorities have a role to play. However, the Commission is tackling the issue in two ways.
“The first is collective rights management: making it easier and giving online models for the marginal part of demand that is illegal to be brought back into legality. It is still the rights’ owners who will decide; they could offer wholesale, across-the-border licensing.
“The second way is a more fundamental look at copyright in the digital age. This is definitely something which the Internal Market Commissioner has put on his agenda in his speeches to the European Parliament. Copyright is an extraordinarily difficult issue, just as it was in the 18th century. We are looking at one of the big societal challenges around the digital world.”
The director general for ICT was in Malta recently to promote the so-called Digital Agenda, the quest of the European Union to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast internet and interoperable applications.
Last March the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 Strategy to exit the international economic crisis and prepare the EU economy for the challenges of the next decade. The Digital Agenda for Europe is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, set out to define the key enabling role that the use of ICT will have to play if Europe wants to succeed in its ambitions for 2020.
The objective of this Agenda is to chart a course to maximise the social and economic potential of ICT, most notably the internet, a vital medium of economic and societal activity for conducting business, working, playing, communicating and expressing ourselves freely. The Commission believes that the successful delivery of this Agenda will spur innovation, economic growth and improvements in daily life for both citizens and businesses. Wider deployment and more effective use of digital technologies will thus enable Europe to address its key challenges and will provide Europeans with a better quality of life through, for example, better health care, safer and more efficient transport solutions, cleaner environment, new media opportunities and easier access to public services and cultural content.
One of the issues to be addressed is the fact that Europe lags behind the United States and some Asian countries in terms of research and development. Europe is to blame for that, according to Mr Madelin.
“Firstly, it happens because there is a lack of entrepreneurial spirit, there is not enough private and public sector investment. Secondly, the whole economy is less focused on ICT than let’s say in Korea or in California. We need not only to boost research and innovation but also convince people in business that they need to wake up to ICT.”
Asked about Malta’s performance in terms of ICT and its role in the Digital Agenda, Mr Madelin had words of praise but also identified areas for further development.
“I guess focus is the answer because of Malta’s status as an island economy,” he replied when asked for the secret of Malta’s success in ICT over the past decade. “ICT as a communication technology achieves a lot of focus as a key driver. We can also see a good awareness in society as a whole that this can be useful. That puts a country like Malta in a very strong position, but to get lift off it always takes a bit more. Malta is really a poster child for e-government and now the question is getting the average citizen to mainly rely on e-government. That’s a challenge which is common across Europe.”
In terms of Malta’s contribution to the success of the Digital Agenda, Mr Madelin pin-points two areas where Malta can have a significant role.
“On a European level there are two things Malta can contribute towards, maybe I’d say even more in the future than in the past. Sharing your brains through the European research programmes is the first. There are a lot of opportunities to network there. Secondly, Malta can be what we call a ‘living lab’ for the ICT future. The ideas around the Maltese government’s Smart Island strategy I suppose, are part of that, but a living lab as we would see it is a bit more than that.
“It’s actually saying ‘here are some experiments and we want to get the best ideas to deliver certain ICT solutions and test them’. This is done in a context where you have got relatively good broadband speeds and relatively good roll-out and an educated and empowered population. That can be a very powerful model and which, so far, we have not created enough of it in Europe as a whole,” he added.