BBC, RTÉ etc aren’t generally the rights holders except for their own in house programme, the rights holders are the actual programme makers, actors etc.
If eir, sky, virgin etc kept providing the more expensive boxes with built in hard drives, then there is no issue at all, everyone can record everything forever legally on the box, and can’t be prevented from doing so by law. There is no issue with the actual rights holders.
By going to cheap cloud solutions, the networks now need to rights to replay from the cloud and the rights will be different for every movie, soap etc depending on who made it and when and even whether there was such a thing as cloud recording and replay when it was made. You’ll have some programmes that can be replayed for a day, some from a week, some never and some which will never be cleared for Ireland. BBC aren’t ‘blocking’ recording they just have no reason to ever clear their programmes for it. They said to the networks we won’t clear them, stick to the current boxes and the networks went ahead anyway. It’s a mess, and always will be and it’s caused by the move to cheap boxes by the providers.
Or to look at it another way, most TVs in Ireland now have freesat tuners and saorview tuners, if you plug a hdd into your TV you can record any bbc, RTÉ or virgin show and keep it forever and no one can prevent you. The signals are not encrypted and you are entitled to record locally by law. Sky Glass, VM and virgin boxes don’t allow you to do this because they are preventing it, not the broadcasters.
