The Audiovisual Media Authority has taken a new step in the fight against piracy. Today, by unanimous vote, AMA’s Board approved the proposed amendments to the regulation “On the criteria and procedures for granting authorizations”. These amendments introduce strengthened measures to ensure compliance with the law, with a particular focus on strengthening the obligation for all audiovisual entities that sell audiovisual products to provide exclusively the product for which they are licensed.
The authorization granted to repetitive entities does not apply to free-to-air channels that are available to citizens. This issue, identified by AMA’s monitoring teams as a recent form of abuse, has been one of the key concerns addressed. The activity carried out by certain entities, offering free-to-air channels together with the authorized product, is a law violation and an exploitation of regulatory gaps that have so far existed in the authorization regulation.
It’s important to emphasize that this strengthened measure is not a restriction on technology, but rather a restriction on the recent abuses committed by entities that have included free-to-air channels as part of their paid packages. Today’s approval of the amendments to the Regulation “On the criteria and procedures for granting authorizations”, puts an end to such practices and from now on, all entities are under the legal obligation to configure the decoders they sell exclusively for the programming and channels for which they are authorized. Free-to-air channels will remain freely accessible to the public, without requiring any additional payment as an extra service.
The approved amendments also introduce facilitative measures regarding the documentation required from audiovisual media service providers when applying for authorization or renewal of authorization.
AMA’s Chair, Armela Krasniqi, held consultation roundtables for the proposed amendments across all regions with stakeholders, securing the support of the majority of them.
