Cape Town - Broadcaster e.tv claims Communications Minister Faith Muthambi has effectively prevented free-to-air television stations from encrypting their signals, permanently blocking their access to high-definition content and future improvements in technology.
This is because sellers of quality content like popular series and movies for release on television demand the assurance it will not be pirated - which can only be done with the ability to scramble the broadcast signal.
But Muthambi, in amendments to the government’s digital migration policy published on March 18, specified that the five million set-top boxes it plans to give free of charge to poorer households would not have the ability to unscramble an encrypted signal.
In response, e.tv filed court papers on Tuesday seeking the review and setting aside of key elements of Muthambi’s policy.
It says the amendment relating to encryption precludes free-to-air broadcasters from encrypting their signal because doing so would mean the owners of the 5 million subsidised STBs would be unable to receive their channels.
Given that there are an estimated 8 million housholds that rely on a terrestrial television signal (those who don’t subscribe to satellite services like DStv) for all their TV entertainment, this would cut e.tv or any other would-be free-to-air broadcaster off from 60 percent of the terrestrial television market and 35 percent of the total television market of an estimated 13 million housholds.
In the case of e.tv, this would be a breach of its licence conditions, which stipulate it must provide a minimum population coverage of 77 percent.
It would also drastically reduce its ability to attract advertising and would be “catastrophic” to its business, e.tv argues in its founding affidavit.
While the effect of the minister’s “encryption amendment” is to prevent free-to-air broadcasters from using encryption, says e.tv, the paragraph immediately below it says “broadcasters may at their own cost make decisions regarding the encryption of content”.
“I submit that it is the very essence of unreasonableness and irrationality to purport to confer a right on a party via a policy and yet immediately render that right meaningless and nugatory by related aspects of that policy,” argues e.tv group executive for regulatory strategy Lara Kantor in the affidavit.
Political Bureau