Judge Rejects Fox's Attempt To Shut Down Dish's Autohop Feature, But Indicates It May Still Infringe
from the innovation-killers dept
Earlier this year, we wrote about the TV networks suing Dish Networks for its new Autohop feature. Dish created a neat bit of innovation, which automatically recorded all prime time shows for people to watch later, and as long as you watched the day after the shows aired, it would auto-skip the commercials. This is the kind of thing that a user could set up themselves, though it's a bit cumbersome, and too many DVR providers have shied away from automated "commercial skip" features after the TV industry sued ReplayTV over such a feature (despite many VCRs having it already). Ridiculously, the networks, led by Fox, claimed that skipping commercials is a form of copyright infringement. The theory there is... convoluted, at best.The latest news is that Fox has lost in its attempt to get an injunction, meaning that the service will live on as the trial continues. The filing is sealed for now, as apparently there are some trade secret details that need to be redacted. However, both sides are trying to claim victory -- with Fox saying that the order does indicate that the feature is copyright infringement:
"As reported, the court denied Fox's request for a preliminary injunction. But we are gratified the court found the copies DISH makes for its AutoHop service constitute copyright infringement and breach the parties' contract. We are disappointed the court erred in finding that Fox's damages were not suitable for a preliminary injunction. We intend to appeal that portion of the court's decision, as well as the court's separate findings concerning the PrimeTime Anytime service. DISH is marketing and benefitting from an unauthorized VOD service that illegally copies Fox's valuable programming."That sounds bizarre -- as it suggests that the court still thinks that a service to skip commercials could be infringing -- but we understand that's not the case at all. The ruling is very, very specific and only narrowly found infringement in one small, minor aspect of what was happening. And, the fact that there's no injunction is actually pretty damning for Fox. It shows that the court doesn't believe the "harm," if there is any, is so bad that it can't be dealt with eventually through monetary awards, rather than shutting down the service. It still seems ridiculous that building a useful service that provides features that people want -- which involves things that individuals can do on their own -- is somehow infringing. Dish's own statement suggests that this ruling is mostly a win -- and the "loss" is minor, since it appears the key aspects of its service were not found to be infringing.
"Today's ruling is a victory for common sense and customer choice. DISH is gratified that the Court has sided with consumer choice and control by rejecting Fox's efforts to deny our customers access to PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop -- key features of the Hopper Whole-Home DVR. The ruling underscores the U.S. Supreme Court's ‘Betamax’ decision, with the court confirming a consumer's right to enjoy television as they want, when they want, including the reasonable right to skip commercials, if they so choose."We'll have more once the redacted ruling is unsealed, but from what we've heard, Fox lost bigtime here. Still, just the fact that this is even being fought out in court should be an indication of the ridiculousness of copyright law today, in which companies aren't allowed to innovate without Hollywood (or the courts) having to first give approval.
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Filed Under: autohop, commercial skipping, copyright
Companies: dish networks, fox
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Screw The MAFIAA
I Make Sure You Are Censored From My Wallet ! If you are MAFIAA then you can just go to Hell.
Buy & Support Local and Indie Art Only !
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Copyright harm
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Re: Copyright harm
Yes, the commercials in Fox reruns onDemand are unskippable. Their precious, precious content? Feel free to whiz on by all of it.
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Re: Re: Copyright harm
It makes sense to them...most people want their content, but don't care for commercials. Instead of offering the carrot by allowing customers to decide what they wish to do, they employ the stick by making them view the commercials. The truth is, the content itself is the only carrot Fox (and other media ventures) have, it is the content that drives the consumer to their only commercial product, the commercials, which of course, they are selling to their customers. So in otherwords, it isn't their content that is precious, but the commercials.
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Re: Re: Re: Copyright harm
The whole issue is that their business model has been turned upside down and people are just choosing to not click on their ads.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright harm
I think we are in violent agreement. I doubt Mike cares that you don't click the ad, and he certainly doesn't hide the article until you click the ad (unlike Murdoch and the other media barons.) He offers the carrot (content) and in exchange, you occasionally get crappy flash-pop-overs from Siemens when you move your mouse over their ad while switching windows.
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It is this that is leading to their downfall an it is this that is pushing people to piracy. Everything else is all bollocks smoke and mirrors.
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In fact, I press mute while sitting there too.
" make it audible in the Kitchen "
How's that working out for them?
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If they could get away with it, they'd disable your mute button the same way they program their DVDs to disable your FFW and MENU buttons during their pre-movie ad blitz.
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I'm even thinking of getting one of these.
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From the broadcasters point of view, the only thing that counts (i.e., affects their ad rates) is what is shown in the metrics. Fox doesn't care if you actually watch the commercials, but they care a lot about whether the commercials play on your TV.
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> the only thing that counts (i.e.,
> affects their ad rates) is what is
> shown in the metrics. Fox doesn't
> care if you actually watch the
> commercials, but they care a lot about
> whether the commercials play on your TV.
So why are they concerned about this AutoHop feature? As it stands right now, neither they nor the advertisers have any way of knowing whether I watch the commercials or skip them. All they know is that commercials were served with the show and ad rates are set accordingly. How would AutoHop change that? Whether it's me doing the skipping by pressing a button on my remote or the DVR doing the skipping by executing a line of code, the end result is the same from the perspective of the networks and their ad clients.
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It would give ad buyers some solid numbers to use, unlike DVRs.
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> that advertisers will use the existence
> of the Autohop feature as leverage
> to negotiate lower ad rates based
> on the (probably correct) assumption
> that all subscribers to the feature
> will be skipping the ads.
> It would give ad buyers some solid
> numbers to use, unlike DVRs.
That doesn't really make any sense either. They could do the same thing right now-- use the existence of the FFW feature on VCRs and DVRs to demand lower ad rates. Either way, the fact that the feature exists doesn't mean it's being used all the time and they have no way of knowing which people are using it and which are not.
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Not quite. Commercial channels also extract every increasing fees from cable providers. That should be a familiar fact to anyone that follows this stuff or is just a cable customer.
You probably even remember the last time content providers played chicken with your cable company in a bid to increase their fees.
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What?
(I know, there is all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo, it just sounds like insanity when you look at it)
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Re: What?
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Re: What?
Yes, it's still stupid.
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Re: What?
That's the only angle I can come up with.
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Re: Re: What?
Skip commercials at playback time. Then the commercial skipping is merely a feature of the playback device, just as is the fast forward button. Or pause button so you can go to the kitchen.
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Re: What?
> something can come up as a court case
> related to copyright infringement?
They've basically become conditioned to scream "Copyright violation!" anytime anyone does anything with content that they don't like. Whether it's actually a violation of the law is becoming less and less relevant every day. That's how we ended up with 'contributory infringement', after all. Someone did something that Big Copy didn't like, and even though it wasn't even remotely illegal under the actual statute on the books, they managed to get a judge to literally make up a whole new violation and apply it to the defendant and millions of other people by proxy.
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Re: What?
Let's say that Dish is recording content from Fox at Dish's headquarters and determining what is unique about the shows before it goes into/returns from an ad block. They are then sending this information off to all of the Dish receivers located around the world so that those people don't have to do this.
Yes, this could be considered copyright infringement. Broadcast content is provided for viewing purposes--not for calculating things like where program content begins and ends.
For example, let's say I buy NFL Sunday Ticket for my home. I then take all the football feeds and send it to tool that scans the screen looking for the score. I now have all the scores for the Sunday games in realtime which I can post on my website, complete with advertising and social networking and all that stuff and make money from.
However, NFL broadcasts are copyrighted for the private use of the audience, blah blah blah. So, yeah, that would be copyright infringement.
If Dish is doing something similar, they could be in trouble because they only have the "right" to transmit it.
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Another interesting point...
It's not like there's any further obligation on anyone's part to continue to attach the ads to the programming afterward.
That point, alone, should carry enough weight to finish the argument.
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Re: Another interesting point...
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That's a novel claim
There is BIG money in the ad business. I wonder what Procter & Gamble would say about that? Or one of the big ad agencies?
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Commercials
For those that have home theater PCs and record live television to watch later is Fox (and MAFIAA) lawyers going to come after us? Doing this you can go in and edit the commercials out completely and then not even worry about the fast forward button.
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Re: Commercials
so if file sharing 'pirates' redact 20min of commercials from a 60min show, that is a 30% modification, and should have a new copyright applied. the **AAs do this all the time, so why is this infringing for others to do the same thing?
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Constitutionally this is a non issue, unless they try the 1st
I would say DISH has a strong case in claiming that they are protecting CopyRights of the owners of the commercials not being recorded... Didn't the Networks and Hollywood both sue at one point claiming that DVR technology violated Copyright Law???? Seems this case is trying to have their cake and eat it too...
OH WAIT, didn't they also loose the case against DVRs for allowing you to skip 30 seconds forward???
Nothing constitutional about this case, just contractual, so this judge made the right choice.
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If people can watch what they want when they want, they cease being 'consumers' and become...people. Media corps have mad consumer skills; people skills, not so much.
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Sorry, Fox, couldn't care less about what you're complaining about now. I was too busy downloading video files for free onto one of my many hard drives in my desktop, then playing them on a laptop connected by HDMI cable to my 40" HDTV.
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Fox's angle
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Re: Fox's angle
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I guess what ought to happen then is a clock work orange kinda deal, where if you wanna watch Fox TV you need to be strapped into a chair with a straight jacket, have your eyelids held open with toothpicks, and headphones on your ears loud enough to wake the dead but not so loud as to break your eardrums; as that too would be considered infringing.
Okay, I'm down.
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