Polsat launches attack on watching World Cup matches live in restaurants

The World Cup will be bitterly recalled not only by the Polish football team and fans, but also by Warsaw's restaurant and pub owners. Many of them ignor ed, or perhaps overlooked, copyright laws when they sought to attract custom ers by showing the matches live on Polsat Sport. The TV station, which bough t the rights to broadcast the World Cup live, asked the National Police Head quarters to investigate the issue. "On the basis of the information we recei ved from the company we searched one shopping mall in Warsaw. We have questi oned one person and seized a decoder. The case has now been passed to the pr osecutor," said Pawe3 Biedziak, spokesperson for the National Police Headqua rters. This seems only the beginning, as police are now likely to be searchi ng a number of restaurants in search of publicly used Polsat decoders. "Rest aurant owners are not allowed to have a private decoder which shows Polsat S port to their clients," said Polsat's PR manager, Katarzyna Wyszomirska. Suc h illegal public dissemination of copyright material can lead to a sentence of up to five years imprisonment. (Prawo i Gospodarka, p. 8) A.K.