Messaging Companies Penalized Over Big Brother Furore

ICSTIS — the UK premium services regulator — has ruled that Channel 4 had misled viewers over the effect of their SMS votes for evicting Big Brother contestants (press release PDF). “Given that the publicly-available terms and conditions on the Big Brother website stated that: “Once a housemate leaves they forfeit any claim to the prize money”, ICSTIS concluded that the editorial change had indeed caused people to feel misled. Channel 4 acknowledged that this had been an oversight and ICSTIS accepted that Channel 4 had not intended to mislead its viewers. On the basis that the terms and conditions had not been appropriately amended, ICSTIS found that paragraph 4.3.1(a) of its Code of Practice had been breached.”
OK, I don’t think it’s really a huge issue, but it was a technical breach (although I think it could go either way in a court of law). ICSTIS didn’t impose a fine, but Channel 4 will have to cover the investigation costs, about 50,000 pounds. Here’s the thing — the companies which provide the premium SMS service to Channel 4 were also included in the adjudication, with “iTouch and Minick, (receiving) administrative charges of 36,000 pounds and 12,700 pounds respectively”. Channel 4 had already agreed to cover any costs by the companies, but it’s still a concern that the mobile content/messaging companies had been investigated for something they had no control over.
From an e-mail I received on the topic: “The Network for Online Commerce (NOC), the trade body for the Premium Rate Industry had previously expressed dismay that ICSTIS had reacted to the media and elected to pursue the issue and was particularly concerned that the wrong targets were being accused. They did not believe that the voting issue should be allowed to imply that Premium Rate telephone services were at fault as it was purely a Channel4 programming matter.”
Premium services have to be regulated to ensure they don’t rip off the public, but it has to be within reason — in this case the premium services providers did nothing wrong, but were still held culpable.
Related stories:
UPDATE: UK’s ICSTIS To Investigate Big Brother SMS Voting Furore
Icstis Goes After Content Providers, Not Intermediaries

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