The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 (UK TV broadcasters) have called in the lawyers because a Switzerland based broadband TV site, Zattoo.com, has been ripping off their channels without offering them any commercial return.

Zattoo, which aims to have nearly half a million registered UK subscribers by the end of this year, gets the programming directly from broadcaster satellites and simply retransmits them over live broadband feeds via its site.

Unfortunately this practice is done without the broadcasters permission and can not be monitored, thus somebody could conceivably be watching BBC content in the UK without having paid a license fee etc.

Naturally all of the related broadcasters already offer their own alternative streaming services (e.g. BBC iPlayer) and are busily working on a single cross-platform solution (Project Kangaroo) similar to Zattoo’s.