UK Law Re Streaming Video

[NOCHEXContact]

UK Law Re Streaming Video
Can any shed any light on this please, a client of my has spoke with his lawyer and the lawyer is not really 100% sure

Any input would be well received, like can you host from etc?

This could be really bad news for me and a lot of other people. Not funny!

Section 12 of the Video Recordings Act, 1984 states that it's an offence to "supply" videos outside the BBFC regulations.

The Act was written before the Internet but the BBFC has recently updated the Regulations.

The regulations say that, "supply" of R18 (that means hard core) videos is strictly limited to the 90 licenced shops. There is a slight lack of clarity about whether streaming via the internet is acceptable - but, probably not.
I'm very keen to hear from other people in the industry....
Is it illegal to offer viewing (via streaming) or downloading of R18 videos over the internet.

[DirkG]

Wrong section. You need to repost this in the main section not the spam section.

[Paul Markham]

As probably the only guy here who has been prosecuted under this act, I'm going to answer.

The definition of what requires a certificate is "Moving images" not "Video"

David Sullivan mad a fortune selling videos that were just of pictures from magazines. The fact that nothing moved made him excempt from the law.

It covers, CDs, DVDs, Phones and Internet. It costs about $15 a minute to license with a miniimum charge I think of $800. these prices might have been updated. Move the server to Europe and you have no problems as you are just editing in the UK and publishing from EU.

[MMemmer]

Hello NOCHEXContact,

From what I understand of our customers that I have spoken to it does seem that the content you have mentioned would be illegal to have hosted within the UK. I would tend to agree with the information that Paul Markham replied to you with.

We are currently evaluating some of those same laws as we hope to expand our cacheing technology in the near future.

Good luck,