"TV Without Frontiers" Euro Legislation Comes Under Scrutiny
By Alexander Grundner |
July 10th, 2006 
You’ve got to love the names that seemingly innocuous legislation bills get. This time it’s a European directive called “TV Without Frontiers,” which we’ll just call TWF. TWF basically attempts to treat anything that appears to be television and travels over the Internet as traditional television, and therefore should be subject to TV regulations (via ORG). So what does this mean? Products like the Slingbox and Orb would be subject to TV licensing fees for content distribution online, as well as, PC TV tuner card manufactures who are now concentrating on the future “anywhere” TV market. However, TWF does specify that only content distributed by countries under the directive would be forced to comply. It looks like IPTV in Europe is getting off to a shaky start. Oh, and by the way, European lawyers at this moment are fighting over what the true definition of television is (kind of sounds like the same problem we’re having with defining Net Neutrality).
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