Hollywood studios face trust probe as EU flexes muscles
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The European Union accused six top Hollywood studios and the Sky TV pay channel yesterday of breaching antitrust laws, in the latest salvo in Brussels’ efforts to break down digital barriers in Europe.
Brussels accuses Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros, as well as Britain and Ireland’s Sky TV of using movie licenses to block access to their content in other EU countries.
The charges are the newest in a series made by the EU’s steely new Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, fresh from taking on Internet giant Google and Russian energy behemoth Gazprom.
“European consumers want to watch the pay-TV channels of their choice regardless of where they live or travel in the EU. Our EU economy Internet antitrust investigation shows that they cannot do this today,” Vestager said in a statement.
“We believe that this may be in breach of EU competition rules. The studios and Sky UK now have the chance to respond to our concerns.”
There was no immediate reaction from the studios or Sky TV to the announcement, which follows an investigation launched in January 2014.
In May Brussels unveiled an ambitious project to build a digital single market across the union of 28 countries and 500 million people, which is the world’s biggest economy but divided in digital terms.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker also hopes to help build cross-national media champions to take on not only Hollywood but digital giants such as Google as well.
As part of that project, former Danish minister Vestager launched a probe into the way e-commerce in general works across the bloc. The new probe specifically puts into question Europe’s copyright rules, which allow Hollywood studios to sell their content individually to national markets, creating a divided European market in defiance of EU rules.
The commission also said it was still examining similar cases involving Canal Plus of France, Sky Italia of Italy, Sky Deutschland of Germany and DTS of Spain.
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