The Berlin Supreme Court has ruled that cable providers need to pay VG Media for the distribution of private radio stations and TV channels.
VG Media is the collecting society for the private broadcasters including the two major commercial television ones RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1. The ruling confirmed that the cable operators have to pay compensation for cable retransmission depending on their gross revenues.
For analogue cable retransmission the compensation amounts to 2.09% of gross revenues. If the cable operator does not require a broadcaster to pay a carriage fee, the compensation is only 1% of gross sales. For digital cable retransmission, the rates are 2.51% and 2.15% respectively
The case was brought about by a mid-sized cable operator in Berlin which had tried to challenge the payments under the Copyright Act. Berlin’s Supreme Court had subsequently confirmed in the second and final instance the decision of the Landgericht Berlin in 2008 and dismissed the claim.
