AfterDawn: News

Cablevision Systems Corp. was dealt a serious blow last month when Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of several Hollywood studios and television networks in the case over Cablevision's plan to create a network-based digital video recorder for its customers. Cablevision confirmed on Tuesday that it will appeal the ruling.

The Remote Storage DVR, or RS-DVR, would mean Cablevision wouldn't have to install hundreds of thousands of digital set-top boxes in subscribers' homes. The company has already installed more than 500,000 set-top boxes in customers' homes, and the planned RS-DVR would have saved the company a substantial amount from administration and maintenance costs.



While other cable operators had supported the idea for the system, the judge sided with Hollywood, finding that Cablevision storing recorded programs on their servers for their customers would break copyright agreements with content providers. "The RS-DVR is clearly a service, and I hold that in providing this service, it is Cablevision that does the copying," Chin said in his ruling.

"Our remote-storage DVR is the same as conventional DVRs, and merely enables consumers to exercise their well-established rights to time-shift television programming," Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Tom Rutledge said in a statement. "We continue to believe strongly that remote-storage DVR is permissible under current copyright laws."

Source:
Reuters

Written by: James Delahunty @ 10 Apr 2007 6:04