Pay TV fights bid to refund viewers

A Chinese owned Pay Television channel has denied violating the rights of viewers who had subscribed to its services.

StarTimes Kenya Limited argued that buyers were not paying for the local channels that the court ordered them to stop airing.

The firm wants a petition by a consumers’ body seeking to compel it to compensate the viewers, stopped.

BEING SPECULATIVE

“The channels previously aired by StarTimes under the ‘must carry rules’ were not paid for by the subscribers. In any case, they were readily and freely available to anyone who had an aerial connected to their TV set,” the firm’s managing director Leo Lee said.

Mr Lee said the Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) was being speculative in seeking to compel StarTimes to pay millions of shillings in compensation to viewers who bought its set top boxes while the case was still pending at the Supreme Court.

He said the consumers’ lobby had not identified anyone, who was directly affected by the decision to stop broadcasting three local channels, NTV, Citizen TV and KTN.

Cofek went to court seeking an order to compel the company and GOtv Kenya Limited to pay subscribers for the inconvenience.

Mr Lee wants the application put on hold until their appeal is determined. He says the suit exposes them to double litigation given the same issues the lobby raises are before the highest court.

“StarTimes faces two sets of proceedings before two different courts. This would compel us to raise our grounds of appeal at the Supreme Court. The scenario might lead to embarrassing rulings from the courts,” Mr Lee said.

He said the High Court could reach a decision based on an order that the Supreme Court might overturn, leading to waste of time.

Pay TV stations stopped airing the local channels following a Court of Appeal order that they were infringing on the intellectual property rights of the three leading stations.

VIOLATED THE RIGHTS

The consumers’ body argued that the continued no-show of the channels was a violation of the subscribers’ rights and their expectation to view them when they acquired StarTimes and GOtv decoders.

According to the agency, seeking the consent of the media houses to air their content was the sole mandate of the pay stations.
Cofek accused the Communication Authority of Kenya of failing to protect consumers, saying, they gave Kenyans misleading information while selling their products.

In March, the Court of Appeal declared that StarTimes and GOtv had violated the rights of the three media houses by airing their programmes without their consent and gave an order to pull them off air.