Supreme Court Declines Case; Cablevision DVR Remains Legal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 29, 2009 - 6:37am.

Washington - The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal challenging the legality of Cablevision's (NYSE: CVC) network-based digital video recorder service, which the television networks and movie studios had charged amounted to copyright infringement. Unlike a TiVo, which stores recorded programs locally on a hard drive in the consumer's home, Cablevision's "remote storage" digital video recorder stores recorded programs on the company's own servers, and streams them on demand to customers.

The networks and studios sued Cablevision, alleging that "buffer" copies of their works stored briefly on Cablevision's servers constituted copyright infringement.

A federal court agreed in March 2007, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in August 2008.

The Supreme Court's declining to hear an appeal of the case puts Cablevision on track to legally launch a remote-storage digital video recorder, although Ars noted that the company could remain open to claims of contributory copyright infringement by the studios and networks.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/l473u (Ars Technica)

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090629-709359.html

http://snipurl.com/l483f (DMW previous coverage)