Porn station fails to win block on decoder ban: Red Hot TV defiant despite court defeat

THE MAN behind Red Hot Television yesterday promised to carry on his fight after the satellite channel lost an important action in the Court of Appeal. 'It will be business as usual,' Gorm Oldorf, managing director of Continental Television in Copenhagen, said. Mr Oldorf said that 'somebody in Britain is making laws blindfolded'.

Three judges upheld a High Court decision that the Government could stop the company selling decoders in Britain from next Saturday. Other government measures block advertising or promotion of the channel. The High Court ruled that the case had to be decided in Europe but would not allow Continental an injunction to stop the government action.

The High Court said that it considered as a matter of public policy that the pornography channel risked causing serious harm to children's morals.

While the British action does not kill the station off, it will damage it. Those who have purchased decoders will be able to carry on using them. The company has said that it will switch to a new system which is compatible with existing decoders. 'And if necessary, we will move outside the EC,' Mr Oldorf said. 'It will change nothing.'

The company argued that it would win in the European Court of Justice and that the British ruling would cost it money, and so it sought an injunction, refused by both the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

David Pannick QC, for Continental, said there was a 'strong possibility' the company would win. But the ruling by the European Court of Justice could take at least two years, according to legal experts in Brussels.

Recently a senior commission official said that despite an EC European Broadcasting directive, national governments had a wide area of manoeuvre on what they could permit.