Justice Dept. Sides With Cablevision in Network DVR Dispute

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 1, 2009 - 12:05pm.

Washington - The U.S. Justice Department has weighed in on the side of Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) in a legal dispute between the cable TV provider and the Hollywood TV networks and movie studios, over its planned "remote storage" digital video recorder that would store recorded programs on the company's servers rather than a consumer set-top box, Dow Jones Newswires reported. U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to decline to hear an appeal of a lower court's ruling that said the technology does not violate federal copyright laws.

"Network-based technologies for copying and replaying television programming raise potentially significant questions, but this case does not provide a suitable occasion for this court to address them," Kagan wrote in a brief filed with the court.

The networks and studios alleged in their suit that storing the recordings that would typically reside on a the hard drive of a consumer's digital video recorder locally, and then streaming them to a consumer's TV on-demand, constitutes an unauthorized retransmission of their copyrighted content.

The Supreme Court had originally sought out an opinion on the case from the Justice Dept. in January; it's unclear when the court will issue its decision on whether or not to hear the case.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/j8go5 (Dow Jones)

http://snipurl.com/j8gml (NewTeeVee)

http://snipurl.com/j8ha1 (DMW previous coverage)