SMIT (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Deloitte are carrying out a study on behalf of the European Commission on the transposition and implementation of the new provisions in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

This survey focuses on one of those new provisions in particular, more precisely the so called "signal integrity provision”. Said provision is concerned with guaranteeing the integrity of programmes and audiovisual media services provided by media service providers.

Our questions are meant to help us understand your perspectives and views on the matter and to gauge whether, and to what extent, you deem regulation necessary. All information you provide will be aggregated and anonymised unless otherwise explicitly stated and agreed upon. Please let us know in case you still need certain parts of your contribution to be treated confidentially.
Contacts for questions on this: karen.donders@vub.ac.be, steven.dewaele@vub.be.

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* 1. Please enter the below information

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* 2. Have you already experienced difficulties (disputes, litigations, …) with respect to programmes or audiovisual media services being overlaid for commercial purposes or transmitted in a shortened form, altered or interrupted (see Article 1(12) and Recital 26 of Directive 2018/1808 on the integrity of programmes and audiovisual media services, a.k.a. “signal integrity”, footnotes (1) & (2))?

Please, be as specific as possible w.r.t. what exactly these disputes, litigations, … were about and what their outcome was, if any.

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* 3. Are there, besides these overlays and modifications, other types of overlay or changes to the transmission of programmes or audiovisual media services that you (would) consider problematic?

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* 4. Which overlays or changes to the transmission of programmes or audiovisual media services do you consider not to be problematic and should be left out of the scope of the “signal integrity” article?

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* 5. In case you have concluded contractual agreements that stipulate how the media service provider’s audiovisual media service (e.g. a television broadcast) is to be handled, can you tell us whether these stem from existing national rules and regulations, from commercial negotiations, or from a combination of both? If none of your contractual agreements contain such provisions, then skip to question 8.

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* 6. For the provisions stemming from existing national rules and regulations, can you refer us to those rules and regulations?

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* 7. For the provisions stemming from commercial negotiations, can you tell us what exactly you agreed upon?

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* 8. In cases where you conducted negotiations with another party on such provisions, but remained unsuccessful, can you please explain to us what exactly prevented parties from reaching an agreement? If you have no such cases, please skip to question 9.

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* 9. In cases where there was no agreement to negotiate such provisions from the start (one party wanted it, the other did not), can you tell us what was the reason for this a priori disagreement? If you have no such cases, please skip to question 10.

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* 10. In cases where neither party expressed a wish to have such provisions, can you tell us what this was due to? If you have no such cases, please skip to question 11.

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* 11. In light of your responses to questions 1-10 above, what would you want your contractual arrangements on the matter to look like ideally? Please, be as specific as possible.

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* 12. In light of your response to question 11, how would you want your government to transpose article 7b (1) of the revised AVMS Directive? Please, be as specific as possible.

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* 13. Is there any other information or material not captured by our questions, but which you wish to share? 

Please, send any files you want to share on the matter to karen.donders@vub.ac.be and steven.dewaele@vub.ac.be with as subject “Signal Integrity Survey”.

Please click Done at the end of this page to submit your answers.

Thank you for your participation in this survey!
Footnotes: 

(1) “Member States shall take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure that audiovisual media services provided by media service providers are not, without the explicit consent of those providers, overlaid for commercial purposes or modified.

For the purposes of this Article, Member States shall specify the regulatory details, including exceptions, notably in relation to safeguarding the legitimate interests of users while taking into account the legitimate interests of the media service providers that originally provided the audiovisual media services.”

(2) “In order to protect the editorial responsibility of media service providers and the audiovisual value chain, it is essential to be able to guarantee the integrity of programmes and audiovisual media services supplied by media service providers. Programmes and audiovisual media services should not be transmitted in a shortened form, altered or interrupted, or overlaid for commercial purposes, without the explicit consent of the media service provider. Member States should ensure that overlays solely initiated or authorised by the recipient of the service for private use, such as overlays resulting from services for individual communications, do not require the consent of the media service provider. Control elements of any user interface necessary for the operation of the device or programme navigation, such as volume bars, search functions, navigation menus or lists of channels, should not be covered. Legitimate overlays, such as warning information, general public interest information, subtitles or commercial communications overlays provided by the media service provider, should also not be covered. Without prejudice to Article 3(3) of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council, data compression techniques which reduce the size of a data file and other techniques to adapt a service to the distribution means, such as resolution and coding, without any modification of the content, should not be covered either.
Measures to protect the integrity of programmes and audiovisual media services should be imposed where they are necessary to meet general interest objectives clearly defined by Member States in accordance with Union law. Such measures should impose proportionate obligations on undertakings in the interest of legitimate public policy considerations.”

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