Sky, ITV and Channel 4 team up against FilmOn
FilmOn not on?
UK-based IPTV venture FilmOn is under fire again, with Sky, ITV and Channel 4 threatening the site with legal action.
FilmOn has been around since 2009 and is the brain child of billionaire movie producer Alki David.
In September it was celebrating being the first IPTV venture to release TV feeds in HD in the US.
However, a month later the big boys of American TV networks – Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC – managed to get the site to turn off its web streams of their channels.
These feeds were halted due to copyright problems.
When the US networks issued a lawsuit, David said at the time: "It's all just semantics. People need to stop being afraid of opening up doors to digital technology."
Not an authorised service
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This hasn't happened and now UK broadcasters have got involved, with ITV saying in a statement: "FilmOn is not an authorised service and we reserve the right to pursue any site or service we believe to be infringing our copyright or using our content in an unlicensed, illegal capacity."
The problem seems to be that FilmOn is rebroadcasting live TV over the web without the permission of the channels.
When it comes to free-to-air channels, David believes the site is doing nothing wrong, explaining: "There is no difference between the Internet and satellite.
"There's little difference between having a digital television box (and having television delivered through a computer)."
It's now up to the courts to decide if this is the case.
Via Deadline.com
Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.