Background: The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit today ruled in a case brought by that Cablevision’s remote DVR system did not violate copyright law.
The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:
“This decision is a great victory for innovation, technological progress and consumers’ rights. The Appeals Court reversed a lower-court ruling last year that made an artificial distinction between a VCR or TiVo device located on a customer’s TV set and a remote recording system (RS-DVR) operated by a cable company.
“We agree with the Appeals Court ruling that found: ‘We do not believe that an RS-DVR customer is sufficiently distinguishable from a VCR user to impose liability as a direct infringer on a different party for copies that are made automatically upon that customer’s command.’
“The Appeals Court properly found that copies of material buffered for a mere 1.2 seconds do not constitute a copy over which a customer or cable company could be sued.
“The content industry, in suing Cablevision, once again overreached in its goal to limit the personal uses of increasingly popular technology. We hope this case will be another signal to Hollywood to scale back its attacks on consumer-friendly technologies.
“In contrast, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that buffered copies of material should be subject to copyright license. We hope the Copyright Office will heed this decision and will reverse its position.”
A copy of the decision today is here
Public Knowledge was a party to an amicus brief in this case supporting Cablevision, here.
Our analysis of the lower court ruling last year is here.
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.