Satellite and Cable Directive
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Council Directive 93/83/EEC of 27 September 1993 on the coordination of certain rules concerning copyright and rights related to copyright applicable to satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission is a
European Union directive A directive is a legal act of the European Union that requires member states to achieve a particular result without dictating the means of achieving that result. Directives first have to be enacted into national law by member states before thei ...
which governs the application of
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
and related rights to
satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
and
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
in the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
. It was made under the internal market provisions of the
Treaty of Rome The Treaty of Rome, or EEC Treaty (officially the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community), brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the best known of the European Communities (EC). The treaty was sig ...
.


Satellite broadcasting

An author has the exclusive right to authorise or to prohibit the broadcasting of his or her works by satellite (Art. 2). This right may only be subject to a compulsory licensing scheme when the satellite broadcast is simultaneous with a terrestrial broadcast rt. 3(2) Satellite broadcasting is assimilated to terrestrial broadcasting for the purposes of related rights (rights of performers, phonogram producers and broadcasting organisations) (Art. 4): the protection of these rights is governed by
Directive 92/100/EEC Directive 92/100/EEC is a European Union directive in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It creates a "rental and lending right" as a part of copyright protection, and sets out minimum ...
.


Cable retransmission

The main effect of the Directive is to stipulate that cable retransmission must be on the basis of
contract A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tr ...
ual, not
statutory A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
, licences with copyright holders, although existing statutory licence schemes were permitted to remain in force until the end of 1997 (Art. 8). These licences may only be granted or refused by collecting societies rt. 9(1) which effectively makes such societies compulsory: a collecting society may be deemed to be mandated to manage the cable retransmission rights of a copyright holder in the absence of any expressive agreement rt. 9(2) Broadcasting organisations are free to exercise their own related rights to license or prohibit the cable retransmission of their own broadcasts (Art. 10). The Directive also provides for mediation in disputes between cable operators and collecting societies (Art. 11) and for measures to prevent abuse of monopoly powers (Art. 12).


Implementation


See also

*
Copyright law of the European Union The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through ...
* Broadcast piracy


References


Council Directive 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property
''OJ'' no. L346 of 1992-11-27, p. 61.


External links


Text of the DirectiveReport from the Commission on the coordination of certain rules concerning copyright and rights related to copyright applicable to satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission
26 July 2002. {{Intellectual property laws of the European Union Copyright law of the European Union European Union directives 1993 in law 1993 in the European Union