Supreme Court Denies Film Industry's Petition For Certiorari In Cartoon Networks V. CSC Holdings

The United States Supreme Court has denied the film industry's petition for certiorari in Cartoon Networks v. CSC Holdings, leaving standing the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the cable company had not infringed plaintiffs' copyrights by offering its customers online video storage for replay on recall.
recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com • 6.29.09 @11:05PM
Hayden Frost   I wanted to add that this case was stupid in the first place. When it comes to consumers, Cablevision's RSDVR is functionally the same as a standard set top box. Cablevision says that the configuration of the hardware gives them 30-40% savings in deployment costs. Let's just say it's only 33% for the sake of the copyright guys. If deployment costs $30m for a regional deployment of DVR tech, then RSDVR saves $10m in each region. If the copyright guys want more than $10m per region for licensing, then there's absolutely no point in deploying this technology because the costs will be the same (if not more) than a functionally equivalent tech. On top of that, the entire $10m can't go straight to the studios because there are administrative costs that have to be made up in managing the licenses. Then you can add on R&D/patent costs for the base technology. And finally, if any studio didn't sign on, they'd still bitch and complain and sue which means more legal fees and probably a monetary judgment.

To make a long story short, if this was found to be infringing, it would be absolutely pointless. From a business standpoint, the lawsuit was stupid. It was the studio's bet that Cablevision would rather negotiate licenses with all the studios so it could take a small cut, instead of just using the old tech without permission.   6.30.09 @3:12PM
Hayden Frost   While the news "broke" on a blog, here's the actual source: supremecourtus.gov

The SG's brief on this case is spot on. Cablevision (and Tivo for that matter) are not directly infringing, and at most, you can say they're liable for contributory because they go a few steps further than the betamax. The problem is that in this case, the plaintiffs waived claims of any secondary liabilities in trade for the defendants waiving fair use. It's one thing if two parties stipulate facts, but when two parties have a case with unresolved issues of law, and they stipulate that "x doctrines are irrelevant" even though they clearly are, then you're only going to get stupidly tortured results   6.29.09 @11:06PM