SKOPJE – 30.06.2010 – During today’s meeting, hosted by the Broadcasting Council (BC), representatives from BC, Agency for Electronic Communications, Ministry of Interior, Public Prosecutor’s Office, Agency for Protection of Intellectual Property and Coordination Body for Protection of Intellectual Property set a deadline to the telecom operators until 7 July 2010
to deliver a list of television program services with regulated author’s and related rights for re-transmission on the Macedonian market, no matter if there are analogue or digitally delivered through their public communication networks. (Cable, IPTV or DVB-T)
”The Broadcasting Council will stay on its position of having zero tolerance for illegal re-transmission of audio-visual content also in the future. Our monitoring action of TV programs, which are re-transmitted by the telecom operators, continues and we will severely penalize the offenders by initiating misdemeanor and criminal charges.”- said the president of the Council, Zoran Stefanoski, adding: “Today’s meeting is a proof that the most significant institutions for protection of author’s and related rights have shown willingness for cooperation and the results are already obvious in the field. I expect even bigger success in future.”
The Broadcasting Council in the shortest possible period will inspect the lists of television program services delivered by the operators and will publish them on its web site in order to make them visible and accessible to the whole public. In this way the opportunity for re-transmission of TV services, which have not been registered by BC, will be set to a minimum.
In this way BC shapes an environment for healthy competition for the telecom operators and creates a solid ground for them to adhere to the legal provisions, which regulate the media market. An added value is that BC is also making efforts to protect the subscribers from unpredicted turning on and off of unregistered TV channels.