Use of satellite decoders from 1 January 2021

From 1 January 2021, it will become an offence to use satellite broadcast decoder devices intended for EU audiences to access a programme included in a broadcast made from the UK with the intent of avoiding a charge associated with the programme. This is already the case for satellite decoder devices intended for non-EU audiences.

If you do this in the UK you will need to:

stop using EU satellite decoder devices to avoid committing an offence

consider instead purchasing the relevant UK satellite broadcast package to view the programmes.

Using EU decoders for purposes other than to avoid a charge

The change will not affect those who use EU decoder devices to access programmes included in UK broadcasts for purposes other than the avoidance of a charge.

For example, expats living in the UK who use decoder devices intended for EU audiences to view programmes in their native language are not, nor will they be, covered by the offence of section 297, provided there is no intent to avoid any charge associated with the programmes.

Background

Satellite broadcasters often restrict their broadcasts on a territorial and paid-for basis by encrypting their transmissions. To access a broadcast, consumers buy or lease ‘decoder devices’ (such as set top boxes), which convert the encrypted transmissions to a watchable form.

Illicit (for example, cloned) decoder devices or decoder devices intended for use in another country are sometimes used to access programmes that are otherwise available via a legitimate, UK broadcasting service. Section 297 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) makes this a criminal offence when done dishonestly to avoid paying a charge to the UK broadcaster.

In 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that section 297 should not apply where it prevented people in the UK from using legitimate decoder devices intended for use elsewhere in the EU, even when they do so to avoid a charge for the relevant UK broadcasting service.

This is because such a restriction is inconsistent with the EU’s ‘freedom of services’, provided by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

What is changing

The government is disapplying provisions on freedom of establishment and the free movement of services from 1 January 2021. See The Freedom of Establishment and Free Movement of Services (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 for further information on freedom of establishment and freedom of services.

Under these changes, the existing restriction to the criminal offence defined in section 297 of the CDPA will fall away. It will become an offence to use satellite broadcast decoder devices intended for EU audiences to access a programme included in a broadcast made from the UK with the intent of avoiding a charge.

This change will not weaken or change in any way the illegality of illicit decoder devices for the acts specified by section 297 (for example, cloned, counterfeit, or stolen decoder devices).