copyright law

Broadcasters who lost their copyright challenge in the Second Circuit to Aereo's Internet streaming service of free broadcast TV programming are going to seek certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, Variety reported in an exclusive. Contrary rulings against Aereo rival FilmOn X could set up a circuit split if the Ninth Cicrcuit followed the lead of trial-court rulings.

The Hollywood Reporter has this story: the broadcasters who allege Aereo's retransmission over the Internet of their free broadcast TV programmising is "copyright infringement want to find out why Aereo's patent applications state there is no simple way to access TV programming on digital devices." As a result, a judge is "allowing TV broadcasters to spend an hour deposing Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia and CTO Joseph Lipowski over statements made in patent applications," The Hollywood Reporter also reports.

The Hollywood Reporter has this piece on a conference call between investors and the CEO of Aereo, an Internet streaming service for free broadcast television that is challenging the boundaries of copyright law. CEO Chet Kanojia said that if his firm loses its court battles that "entire industries" would be threatened, Hollywood Reporter reported. "'The implication of not allowing private performance means" more people would pay more for performance licenses as well as posing a threat to entertainment companies working on cloud DVR services, Kanojia said on the call.

The long-running putative class action between Google and the Authors Guild and other content producers over Google's project in which it has digitized over 20 million books was back in federal court yesterday.

Reuters reports that Judge Denny Chin appeared to favor the fair use argument by Google, which is seeking to immunize the claims of copyright infringement brought by the plaintiffs. Chin said that Google's project has helped people get information, including law clerks in his chambers, Reuters reported of the oral argument.

The Second Circuit ruled that Chin prematurely approved class certification for the authors without deciding if the fair use defense applies. While Chin is a circuit judge himself now, he retained jurisdiction, Reuters reported.

While streaming TV services Aereo and FilmOn X have a common cause in fighting the boundaries of copyright law and broadcast TV networks' exclusive rights to public performance of their programming, the firms' leaders seem to have have personal animus toward each other - or at least the CEO of FilmOn does after originally calling his firm Aereokiller until sued by Aereo on the name issue. The Verge reports FilmOn's billionaire owner accused Aereo of pursuing denial of service attacks against his firm in a tweet: '"@ckanojia - hey fuckhead, if you keep ddosing FilmOn you are going to pay in more ways than you can imagine.' A second message from David's account followed a few minutes later. 'What you are doing is like breaking into someone's home and smashing their shit up,' the tweet said. 'Fortunately [you] lame fuck, my geeks are smarter.'"

John Dean has this analysis of the Jones V. Dirty World Entertainment case heading to the Sixth Circuit, a case which could change the parameters of the law on the safe harbors provided in the Communications Decency Act to Internet Service Providers from defamatory on-line material.

CDA Section 230 protects Internet intermediaries fr0m liability for information provided by other information content providers. According to the trial court opinion, a Cincinatti Bengals cheerleader complained about sexual postings about her, includiing that she had slept with multiple team members and that she had a sexually transmitted disease, on thedirty.com. But the site refused to take them down. Web site editor Hooman Karamian, also known as Nik Richie, not only selected what postings to put up but also commented on the postings. The trial judge, according to the opinion concluded, thedirty.com and its editor were not entitled to the CDA safe harbor because the editor '“specifically encourage development of what is offensive about the content”' of the web site.

You can read the opinion on appeal here: http://www.dmlp.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/2012-01-10-SummaryJudgme...

"The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has put forward an defence ingenious enough for Sherlock Holmes himself in a US copyright case that could redraw the boundaries of copyright law to recognise 'complex literary characters.'" the Guardian reports. The plaintiff is seeking to establish that the characters of Holmes and Watson are already in the public domain, but the estate argues that the characters remain protected until the copyrights for all the works in which they appear expire "because the subtleties and quirks of character that define the super-intelligent detective, his trusty right-hand man, and the duo's relationship, were developed throughout the entire body of works," the Guardian further reports.

A federal judge is leaning toward Aereo, the firm challenging copyright law's boundaries by providing individual subscribers retransmissions over the Internet of free broadcast TV through individually assigned antennas, and against a Hearst-owned station in a Boston federal case, the Boston Globe reports.  Federal district courts in California and D.C. have ruled against Aereo's competitor, FilmOn X, but the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Aereo.

The Des Moines Register reports that a competitor to Aereo, a firm pushing the boundaries of copyright law by transmitting free broadcast television over the Internet, has fought off a subpoena. The federal judge ruled that Aereo competitor "Syncbak will not have to provide competitor Aereo with investment-related documents and labeled Aereo’s efforts to acquire emails that reference the company a 'fishing expedition,'" the paper reported.

Cases involve Aereo and another competitor FilmOn X have resulted in federal circuit splits on whether their rebroadcasting of broadcast TV shows violates intellectual property rights to exclusively control the public performance of those shows. Many predict the cases will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

PBS NewsHour has a fascinating transcript of an interview with the CEO of Aereo, one of the new subscription streaming services available to "space-shift" and "time-shift" free TV broadcasts to our computers and mobile devices. Aereo was plainly designed to get around copyright restrictions on public performance rights by being set up with individualized antennas for each customer, and Aereo CEO argues that not only does his technology not violate black-letter copyright law but that it also does not violate the spirit of the law.

Here's an excerpt:

"HARI SREENIVASAN: So, you have got the antenna farms that you're building, essentially. If I'm a customer, I have one particular antenna inside of the Aereo room, so to speak.

But does it seem like a technicality, when you actually don't need 5,000 antennas in a room? You're saying it's to be by the letter of the law. Are you violating the spirit of the law?

But does it seem like a technicality, when you actually don't need 5,000 antennas in a room? You're saying it's to be by the letter of the law. Are you violating the spirit of the law?

CHET KANOJIA: Not at all. I think Congress always intended that consumers to have the ability to have an antenna.

And it's a simple manifestation of that, saying, well, that's what the intent was, the consumer can have an antenna. So, whether I put it in my window or my roof or my neighbor's roof, those aren't restrictions that Congress ever intended or proposed.

So, I think it complies with actually the spirit of the law as well, and perhaps more so, because the idea that consumers should have that choice was always intended by Congress."