Is BBC Claiming That Sky Are The Ultimate Pirates ?

Tonight the BBC took the gloves off and NDS, the company that has long provided the technology behind the Sky television services was the victim.

Now, I have to reveal that I am close to both founders and investors in this company, which has developed much best-of-breed technologies, including the wonderful Sky+ service.

However, it's always been a badly kept secret that millions of people outside of the UK have access to the Sky satellite service, and no one has really made complaints about piracy or been extradited to the US as a result.

Of course, the BBC are on another one of their campaigns, using our taxed funds to protolyse their dreadful near-monopoly and to try and curry favour with the elected representatives of the third estate as they wreak revenge on Murdoch for his decades of power domination over British life.

But the arguments were thin and there is a direct correlation between the piracy that both BSkyB and Google enable and actively support in their own interests, which the UK Government nor the EU have made any significant challenge, much to the detriment of the media industry in Europe.

The 'leakage' of satellite transmissions was never a problem as millions of expats in Spain and France and hundreds of thousands of Dutch and Belgian citizens happily involved free Sky services. Yet, on the internet a single 'out of market' viewer is deemed a disaster.

The reality is that almost all video piracy for live sports in Europe comes from TV transmission, not from the internet, which is much better protected. Sky provides little or no protection from its feeds being pirated, and one could cynically say that it is building potential audiences in other territories for future development. This will be especially beneficial if the European Court of Justice's directive on a single market for broadcasting is carried through to its logical conclusion in constituent states.

Still, a hugely embarrassing situation for Cisco, as potential acquirers of NDS, to find themselves in.