Knowing the score (or not)

If you don't want to see the result, look away now. Those time-honoured words from the announcer prior to the highlights programme come back to mind when I see the news that some licensees have escaped conviction for screening copyright football by claiming that they did not know it was illegal.

All this means is that you should not be reading the Morning Advertiser and especially not these pages. For if you do, you cannot be unaware that the Premier League continues to initiate prosecutions in spite of the pending Karen Murphy case at the European Court. And that knowledge in itself is enough to torpedo any claim that you were ignorant of the laws on breaking copyright.

There is a tendency still for some people to assume that because things have gone quiet on the satellite football front for a while that Sky and others have let their guard

down and it is now OK to install a viewing card from someone else, which lets you crack into live football transmissions.

There is certainly the view around that Saturday afternoons — the well-known "closed period" — can be breached as long as you are beaming the Premier League matches from somewhere outside Europe.

But that is a risk. Apparently, the copyright chasers are still very much in business and this type of "ignorance" is not going to help in the same way as apparently the facts of a few recent failed prosecutions have done.

I am more than a little sceptical of claims that people do not know the copyright laws. If you come into the licensed trade, you get to understand fairly quickly, for example, that you cannot play music without a PRS or in some cases a PPL licence. That should give an indication that showing football on TV might involve licensing. And your colleagues in the trade, or even your customers, will soon put you in the picture.

The problem is that the person who sells you the equipment at a much lower price than the regular viewing card is going to claim that what you pay him is a kind of licence fee, and that this means that you are not breaking the law. Believing him is one thing, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. But making the judge believe that you didn't know is another, somewhat harder, act. It may not, in the long run, be worth the risk at all.

Q&A​

TENs in same place

Q. Can you settle an argument for us? Can two temporary event notices be applied for for the same premises for perhaps different licensable activities or in different locations, or is only one allowed?

A. Temporary event notices are intended to be flexible within the limits laid down by the Licensing Act. They are not permissions, so there is no role for the licensing authority in taking its own approach to what is and is not allowed. It is therefore entirely a matter of not breaching any of the limits.

Premises may have up to 12 temporary events in any one year, and any one person (or an associate) cannot give two consecutive notices — there must be a gap of at least 24 hours between them. But there appears nothing to prevent two TENs being given for the same premises at the same time, by different people undertaking different activities as part of an overall event, or even separately.

In a large building, it may be possible for two events to run simultaneously, each requiring its own notice. The revised Guidance from the DCMS states that a TEN may be given "for part of a building" or a plot within a larger area of land. It is assumed that if this is the case, then the limitation on a maximum of 12 events a year will apply to that room or part, rather than an aggregate for the whole. This has never been tested in court.

So where an authority receives two notices for the same day but for different parts of a building, they have nothing within the Act to sustain a rejection of the notice. It is only if the police object on crime prevention grounds that the matter will be examined in detail.

Direction sign to pub​

Q. I want to put up a sign at the end of the road to direct people to the pub. I have the landowner's permission to do this, but I have been told that it may be illegal, unless it is on a moveable vehicle.

A. The issue of advertising signs varies greatly from area to area, which is why it is difficult to give an overall view.

From the general legal perspective, however, there are two issues raised by the positioning of such signs. One is obstruction of the highway, which can be a criminal offence and would therefore involve police action. The other, more common, problem is that of local authority planning permission for the erection of the sign.

Local authorities have power to control not only the types of buildings that are erected or changed, but also the signs, notices and illuminations that are used on the exterior of the premises and on the highway or adjacent to it.

Public houses are among the businesses that need to attract passing trade, but several of them have run into trouble by erecting signs without first obtaining the necessary planning permission. Local authorities do have the power of veto in this area, and can forbid the erection of signs that they consider an obstruction or potentially hazardous or a distraction, or order their removal if a sign has been erected without consent.

Under-18 notice​

Q. Is it a legal requirement to have a "no alcohol to under 18s" notice on display behind the bar? One of our customers says it is now the law.

A. The increasingly high profile being given to underage sales makes it imperative for all pubs to be very careful in this area. However, it is not an actual legal requirement that a notice to this effect is on prominent display behind the bar.

What is sensible is to display one of the "Challenge" posters so that youngsters are made aware that they will need ID before attempting to purchase drinks.