TVEyes Hit With Incredibly Restrictive Permanent Injunction By Court

from the so-much-for-the-fair-use-'win' dept

Tue, Nov 10th 2015 6:14am — Tim Cushing

The last time we checked in with the long-running TVEyes case, the TV monitoring company had scored another partial victory for fair use. The company packages clips of news stories from TV broadcasts and makes them available to paying subscribers -- which include journalists and government officials.

It had scored a much larger fair use win earlier, when the court found that even the storage of clips by TVEyes fell under fair use, despite Fox News' protests to the contrary. A year later, some of TVEyes' fair use victory was scaled back. The court took another look at the end users' ability to download and store clips and found these actions weren't covered under the fair use ruling. Users could privately share clips and create archives only they could access. What wasn't covered was public sharing and downloading of clips.

In order to comply with the court's decision, TVEyes would need to additionally restrict access to its compiled content. The court didn't say specifically what TVEyes would have to change to comply with the ruling at that point. Those instructions appear to have arrived.

An injunction issued by the court contains all sorts of new restrictions, as Eriq Gardner reports.

Here's a list of things that are now forbidden:

Enabling users to download to their own computers video clips of content telecast on the Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network.

Enabling users to view FNC or FBN content by searching by date, time, and channel.

Enabling users from sharing video clips of FNC or FBN content on social media websites rather than by personally directed emails, with further limitations.

Those further limitations?

If a TVEyes client wants to email a clip, he or she can only do so to five or less recipients. The client also has to register their work email with TVEyes instead of using Gmail or another free web email service. Those being sent the clip will also have to submit their own email address to ensure they are the intended recipients.

These new restrictions could do some serious damage to TVEyes, which charges subscribers ~$500/month for access to a wide variety of news clips. Where high-profile subscribers like Reuters, Bloomberg, the White House (yes, THAT one), the Dept. of Defense and others will go if they find the new restrictions unworkable isn't exactly clear, but it's a safe bet that Fox's litigious efforts will see a few of these entities finding the service no longer worth the investment.

And that's not the full extent of the restrictions in the permanent injunction. TVEyes will also be required to create and implement a social media blockade solely for Fox News content to prevent the public sharing of its clips. Any Fox content circulated by TVEyes will also have to carry a warning that the content has not been purchased or licensed by the company and that unauthorized sharing is considered copyright infringement. So, for $500/month, TVEyes' subscribers will now have the privilege of being blasted with anti-piracy warnings as if they were lowly, DVD-purchasing peasants.

This order can be appealed and most certainly will be, as it imposes a ton of restrictions on content originating from a single source. Fox News gets its own new set of rules and everyone else plays by the old ones. The court's decisions haven't exactly added up to a fair use win, because a real fair use ruling would apply across the board, not just to everything but this one particular litigant's content.

TELEVISION EYES (PDF)TELEVISION EYES (Text)

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Filed Under: archiving, copyright, downloading, fair use, search, tv, tv news
Companies: fox, tveyes

23 Comments

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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 6:42am

Is there no limit to how far Faux News is willing to go to try and blackhole their agenda?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 6:54am

News should not be copyrightable. News should automatically be public domain.
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Rich, 10 Nov 2015 @ 6:56am

Re:
News is public domain. A particular author's writeup is not.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 6:59am

All or nothing
If it's fair use with regards to content created by anyone else, then it's fair use with regards to content created by Fox.

If it's not fair use with regards to content created by anyone else, then it's not fair use with regards to content created by Fox.

The court can't give Fox special treatment, either TVEyes' conduct is considered fair use for all content, including Fox's, or it's not fair use, and that includes the content from Fox.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 7:17am

Making Rupert Proud
Cry from Fox executive suite: “No, no, no! I want it both ways. They can’t use our stuff, but they have to pay us for it anyway!”
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 7:37am

Fox "News" is an oxymoron
I create vastly superior content every time I visit the bathroom.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 7:51am

I'm so happy that copyright fixed whatever problem needed fixing here. Now somebody's job will be harder to do. The law has won again.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 7:56am

Re:
But Fox News isn't news, it's an entertainment channel.
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Ninja (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 8:14am

Re:
Hell?
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Ninja (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 8:15am

Hmmmm, is copyright so broken that it allows different treatment for different content? Really?
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 8:21am

Re:
Well it is one of the best laws money can(and has) buy, so why not?
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DannyB (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 8:37am

Fox News has a reasonable argument against TVEyes
If TVEyes is allowed to continue to operate, it allows critics to be able to fact check Fox News reports.

Further, it would allow critics to compare past Fox News statements with:
* current Fox News statements
* newly revealed facts
* existing facts at the time of Fox News statements
* common sense

Fair Use was never intended to allow someone to criticize Fox News.
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Ninja (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 9:30am

Re: Re:
True. What the heck are the other industries doing that they aren't buying their own laws? *winks at Google et al*
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Almost Anonymous (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 11:26am

A first time for everything
And this is the first time that Fox News and I agree: people should not watch Fox News.
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Almost Anonymous (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 11:27am

Re: Fox News has a reasonable argument against TVEyes
Dude, forgot your "sarc" mark. I guarantee there are people that will take your post seriously.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 11:50am

Re: All or nothing
Wait, so you are suggesting the courts apply basic logic to this case? What are you some sort of hippie-commie-faschist?

This is the USA where money, not logic, buys judgements!
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opit (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 1:07pm

Years ago Jurassic Pork made posts where the intro to 'news' articles on Faux was posted - complete with a label showing how coverage was perverted. This led to lawsuit and blog deletion - something I doubt he found amusing. His response honoured his former label : welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.ca/
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charliebrown (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 1:24pm

Huh?
No searching by date/time? Does that mean they have something to hide? Is that because they say one thing one day and something else the next?

Mind you, the only time I see Fox News is when I watch "The Daily Show". Yes, we have Fox News in Australia, but I've never gone there, not even channel surfing, as all the news channels are grouped together, so I don't actually go on any of them.
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Niall (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 3:55pm

Re: Re: Fox News has a reasonable argument against TVEyes
I use names instead. DannyB is normally sensible so I treated it as having an automatic sarc mark :)
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Nov 2015 @ 7:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, that's why I always get a good laugh whenever someone tries to claim that Google's buying up politicians left and right(usually in an attempt to distract from other companies doing the same). For all the politicians Google supposedly owns, funny that I've yet to see some blatantly pro-Google laws introduced to match the blatantly pro-*AA/cable/other laws.
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DannyB (profile), 11 Nov 2015 @ 9:09am

Re: Re: Fox News has a reasonable argument against TVEyes
I should put a /sarc mark, because people have taken some of my sarc posts seriously in the past.

But I like it to start out sounding like it is serious and then devolve into clearly, beyond any possible doubt, being /sarc.
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DannyB (profile), 11 Nov 2015 @ 9:12am

Re:
Copyright is the hammer to reach for to censor and silence things you don't want to hear. Especially if they need to make fair use clips of what you said.
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That One Guy (profile), 11 Nov 2015 @ 9:55pm

Re: Re: Re: Fox News has a reasonable argument against TVEyes
If people are taking your sarcastic responses seriously, I think a /poe would be more appropriate than a /s.
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