Cablevision Gets Sued By Movie Studios For Copyright Infringement
Ya gotta love cable companies. They’ll try any way to make a buck. Unfortunately for you and me, this one didn’t work. The movie studios say it’s fortunate it didn’t work, but you can be the judge. Here’s the skinny: New York’s Cablevision System Corp., a cable company with just over three million subscribers, rented Network Digital Video Recorders to its customers.
Sure, you say, that’s nothing new, and you’d be right. But only partly right.
Cablevision’s NDVR had a unique feature that no other DVR has. It connects to the servers at the cable company. Imagine a virtually unlimited library of videos. All television shows. All movies. All documentaries. OK, forget the documentaries. I was sold when they said movies. You pay Cablevision for access to their video library, and when Cablevision bought the movie, it had already paid the movie studio royalties, and presumably the movie studios then paid the actors.
At least that was the way it was supposed to work.
Until the movie studios (Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, NBC Studios, CNN and Turner Broadcasting System) sued Cablevision. Apparently Cablevision didn’t pay the movie studio for each time one of its subscribers downloaded one of its movies to one of its NDVRs. Now think about how creative this solution is. Cablevision bought and paid for the movie. Cablevision put the movie on its network servers. Cablevision then rented its NDVRs to you and me.
In other words, the movie was always on a Cablevision-owned piece of equipment. It argued, therefore, that it didn’t have to pay another royalty to the movie studios each time the movie was moved from one piece of its equipment to another piece of its equipment.
Not surprising, the movie studios didn’t see it that way. They argued that they were due a royalty each time the movie was viewed, much like Netflix or a movie rental store does.
In a ruling last Thursday, the judge ruled in favor of the movie studios, and said the setup violated copyright laws.
Cablevision is considering an appeal. Someday, someone will figure out a way to create a Library of Congress-style video library.
Until then, hope springs eternal.
[thanks to mroach and j. craig williams via cc]
Related Posts
- Cablevision Infringes Copyrights in Television Programs
- The Hearsay Exception Lego Movie
- UK Movie Industry Wants to Turn Off Your Internet Without Judicial Review
- IDEA v PETA: New Post-Registration Copyright Infringement
- Disney Video Explains Copyright and Trademark Law
- Dogs Can Now Sniff For DVDs At The Airport
- MPAA Attacks: Lawsuits Come Down on FOMDB and MovieRumor
- The Need for a Reverse Creative Commons Copyright License
- How Libraries and Museums Get Sued for Public Domain Scans
- Top 10 Copyright Law Scandals That Rocked the World in 2009
Sirs:
My complaint/issue is simply this–
Forced Pop Up Advertisement(’s) and Banner Ad screens during Show/Movie viewing…
I’m getting incensed lately of all the sparse advertisement that is continuous and on-going.. My money paid is for the programs that they offer and not for the layover Info Board on my Television /Screen programming. .. I really don’t like the fact that a lot of information is blocked out, covered up and mad un-viewable because of lazy ad programmers/programming.. I would think even the studio’s would consider this changing or ruining their original artistic final product on some level.
It would seem prudent that either a movement be initiated to address this and demand that:
A) it STOP
B) Given the choice (since I’m paying for the viewing service of the program only) to allow/ & or un-allow
C) Be given a greatly reduced price in my service since I’m forced to view
D) Given the option to pay a (small) premium for the service of total Ad exclusion..
Just a thought – Thank You