Re: question about copyright, licensing

Djordje Dragic wrote:
>Sorry if this is a bit offtopic..
>
>If I understood correctly, EPG data can be copyrighted.
>Does a CableTV company have to pay any licences or similar to a 
>'grabber maintainer' or
>someone else for using data from xmltv in broadcast?

I would assume there's a complex web of relationships and payments 
between commercial entities.

Eg, I'd expect that whoever 'generates' a channel would provide the 
schedule data for that channel - and charge for it. Much of that data 
I would expect to have come from the program makers along with the 
program recordings. Whoever produces a guide (wither it's web, print, 
whatever) would have to pay for that guide data. Broadcasters (ie 
those actually transmitting the programs to users) would probably get 
the data as part of the package they pay the channel producer for.

And then as Robert points out, there will be aggregators who will buy 
the data from various sources, aggregate it, and then sell the 
aggregate bundle. Over here in the UK, Radio Times would be a classic 
example - they produce a printed guide of their own, but also sell 
aggregate guide data to newspapers etc. This works for both sides - 
the papers don't have to buy data from multiple sources, and each 
sources doesn't have to deal with lots of papers.

This is of course completely separate from issues of "how" the data 
is transferred. Common sense suggests that the industry would have 
come up with a common standard file format - just like we have common 
a standard transmission format ... oops, that doesn't quite work does 
it ;-)

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.

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