On finding a television service to be unacceptable the ITC may
recommend a proscription order, they also have to satisfy themselves that trade for
the service exists within Britain and that an order would prevent such trade. The
Secretary of State must believe that the order would be in the public interest and that it
is compatible with the United Kingdom's international obligations
Section 177 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 allows for the secretary of state
to make a proscription order for a foreign satellite service, the effect of which is to
make it a criminal offence to supply any equipment for use in connection with the
operation of the service; to supply programme material or arrange for its supply; to place
advertisements in the service; to publish any programme details of the service; and to
supply or offer to supply any decoding equipment enabling the programmes to be received.
Article 22 of the EC Broadcasting Directive deals with the protection of
minors. It falls into three sections. The first two deal directly with programmes which
may harm children. There are two types of programmes in this category. The first are
programmes which might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of
minors. Programmes in this category, particularly those involving pornography or
gratuitous violence must not be allowed. The second type are programmes likely to impair
the physical mental or moral development of minors. Programmes in this category may be
shown if children are unlikely to have access because they are broadcast late at night or
are encrypted. The final part of this Article forbids the transmission of any programme
which incites hatred on grounds of race, sex, religion or nationality.
In addition the broadcaster must have breached the article at least twice
in the previous 12 months. The complaining state must inform the European Commission
and the broadcaster of its intention to take measures should such an infringement
occur again. The Commission and broadcaster have 15 days to produce an amicable
settlement. A section 177 order then comes into force 21 days after it is laid. It is
subject to negative resolution.
Several hard-core pornographic satellite services were
proscribed in the period up to 2000.
Since the incorporation of valuable protection for the European Convention on
Human Rights effective from 2000, the proscription of standard hardcore channels
has ceased. In fact a further proscription order against Satisfaction TV was
under supposedly under consideration for this 5 year period. However it would
have been a clear breach of Human Rights to impose such a ban without justifying
the reason that standard hardcore is harmful and so the order was quietly
halted. Presumably left on the books just to keep the nutters of Mediawatch-UK
at bay.
However in 2005, the Government dusted off the proscription order
for use against the more extreme Extasi. It seems that some of the material
broadcast, eg scat, had been considered obscene by the Department of
Culture, Media & Sport. Hence they considered that a ban could be applied to
this channel
The Government still proved themselves to be human rights abusers though and made no
attempt to justify or even explain why they decided to ban Extasi.
