Sky vs Reven

I was a big champion of how TVNZ should make their free to air channels viewable on Sky boxes. It took a while, but you can now get TVNZ6 and 7 on Sky, which is great.

Sadly Sky do not seem to be reciprocating in the spirit of open access to the episode programme guide for their own channels.

Over at Geekzone Reven explains:

i just receieved a take down order from sky.

was wondering if anyone has any legal expertise?

not sure how much of a case they have, since
– i dont host any epg data
– sky isnt even used as a source for xmltvnz

What this is about is the application designed by Reven reads programme guide data from TV websites, so that users of home theatre PC’s can have an electronic tv guides built in to their systems.

If people want to use their own PCs as an electronic TV guide they should be able to.

In the US and Australia, courts have ruled EPG data is in the public domain. But the small guy probably can’t afford a lawsuit from Sky.

Sky produce a great product in My Sky, and great channels. But if someone wishes to subscribe to their channels, but use their own electronic EPG, they should be able to.