It is also becoming increasingly common in the UK for some pubs to use satellite decoder cards from Greece, Norway, Poland or the Arab world to receive satellite TV broadcasting live English football matches from those countries. Alternatively, they may use cards which allow pirate decryption of scrambled signals. Such cards are typically much cheaper than the cards available in the UK from Sky (who charge extra fees for public showing licences). However, Sky has taken civil and criminal action against some who do this. Two recent cases involving grey cards have been referred to the European Court of Justice. The suppliers of grey cards and Karen Murphy have won their cases at the European Court of Justice. The judges have ruled that right holders cannot license their content on an exclusive territorial basis as it breaches EU Law on competition and free movement of goods and services. However, whilst this ruling allows domestic viewers to subscribe to foreign satellite services, pubs may still need permission from right holders such as the Premier League to broadcast content. This is because certain elements of the broadcast such as branding are copyrighted. The matter now rests on the High Court to incorporate the ruling into UK Law.
