Last week the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) gave its preliminary ruling in two joined cases, FA Premier League v QC Leisure and others and Murphy v Media Protection Services (click here for the judgment).
The case is rightly being reported as a victory for the pub landlady Karen Murphy, whose criminal conviction under section 297(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act for dishonestly receiving a broadcast with intent to avoid payment, although technically still good in law until her case returns to the High Court, will surely now be quashed, since the ECJ has ruled that it’s contrary to internal market law, specifically the freedom to provide services under article 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU). Rather than buying a Sky subscription for her pub, she’d obtained a decoder for a cheaper Greek satellite service from a firm called NOVA. It was this that Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court saw as dishonest, Ms. Murphy having been privately prosecuted by Media Protection Services, a company used by the Premier League, in the ECJ’s words to:
