Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.

Last updated

Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.
Seal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.svg
Court United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Full case nameCartoon Network, LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.
ArguedOctober 24, 2007
DecidedAugust 4, 2008
Holding
Digital video recorder (DVR) services operated by cable television copies do not create copies of copyrighted content that must be authorized under copyright law.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting John M. Walker, Jr., Robert D. Sack, and Debra Livingston
Case opinions
Decision byJohn M. Walker, Jr.
Keywords
copyright infringement, embodiment, transitory duration

Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2nd Cir., 2008), [1] was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision regarding copyright infringement in the context of DVR (digital video recorder) systems operated by cable television service providers. It is notable for partially overturning the Ninth Circuit precedent MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. , regarding whether a momentary data stream is a "copy" per copyright law. [2]

Contents

In this case, Cablevision, a cable television provider, sought to implement a DVR service for its subscribers, allowing them to create copies of programs to be replayed at a later time. A consortium of copyright holders in the television and film industries sued for direct copyright infringement on the grounds of unlawful copying and public performance. The Second Circuit ruled that the DVR service did not constitute infringement. [1]

Background

Cablevision, a cable television provider, announced the development of a "Remote Storage DVR" (RS-DVR) service in 2006. Similar in operation to a traditional digital video recorder (DVR), Cablevision's DVR allowed customers to pause, record, replay, and rewind previously recorded content. Unlike traditional DVRs, which require a device containing a hard drive to be placed in the home of the subscriber, the Cablevision DVR stored content on servers at company facilities. [3]

To implement the DVR service, Cablevision streamed their existing digital television programming through a second server, which identified requested content, then copied this content and held the copy for a brief period before transmitting it to the subscriber for their later retrieval. At various points in the system, content was buffered for brief durations (0.1 and 1.2 seconds respectively). Content requested by a particular subscriber was stored separately and independently for that person and a replay option was only offered to them. [3]

Upon announcing the new service, Cablevision was sued for direct copyright infringement by a consortium of television and movie copyright holders including Turner Broadcasting and its subsidiaries Cartoon Network and CNN; Twentieth Century Fox; NBCUniversal subsidiaries NBC and Universal Studios; Paramount Pictures; Disney and its subsidiary ABC; and CBS. The consortium sued only for declaratory relief and injunctive relief on the grounds of direct copyright infringement, excluding from consideration the topic of contributory copyright infringement. In its response, Cablevision waived any potential defense based on fair use. [1]

District court ruling

The case was first heard at the District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2007, with Twentieth Century Fox as the lead plaintiff. [4] The plaintiff entertainment companies claimed that the Cablevision DVR service enabled copyright infringement. According to the plaintiffs, the buffering of streaming data, necessary for the DVR service's operation, constituted the creation of unauthorized copies to be stored on the company's servers; meanwhile, transmitting those copies to subscribers constituted unauthorized public performance under American copyright law. [4]

Cablevision replied that the copies constituted de minimis use of the original programs because they only existed very briefly during the buffering process. Furthermore, since the creation of copies for later viewing was initiated by subscribers, Cablevision could at most be liable for contributory copyright infringement, which was not at issue in the complaint; and since each copy could only be viewed by the subscriber who requested it, the transmission of the content did not fall under the definition of "public performance" in copyright law. [4]

The district court ruled that buffered copies of programs could themselves be copied again by unauthorized users, and since they included entire original programs, they could not be considered de minimis copies. [4] This finding was supported by the 1993 precedent MAI Systems v. Peak Computer , which addressed much earlier practices in which computer repair technicians made temporary copies of files when fixing a particular computer. [2] The district court also found that Cablevision enabled the creation of each copy because it was stored on the company's equipment; while different copies of the same program, if requested by multiple subscribers, constituted public performance because as digital copies they were identical. [4]

Thus, the district court ruled in favor of the entertainment companies, accepting their argument that the temporary buffering copies of programs were unauthorized copies under copyright law. The court issued an injunction that prohibited Cablevision from operating its proposed DVR service. [4]

Circuit court ruling

Cablevision appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008. [1] This time, Cartoon Network was the lead respondent. The circuit court ultimately reversed the lower court's decision and ruled in favor of Cablevision.

On the matter of temporary buffer copies of programs, the circuit court noted that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires an alleged unauthorized copy to be "fixed", meaning that it must be both "embodied in a copy or phonorecord" and perceivable "for a period of more than a transitory duration" [5] (which the court denoted as the "embodiment" and "duration" requirements). The circuit court found that the district court had relied too heavily on the embodiment requirement and did not properly consider the duration requirement. Hence, the circuit court rejected the lower court's reliance on MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. , which did not address copies of files that only exist for a very brief duration of time. This in turn disregarded the "transitory duration" requirement of the Copyright Act, and a buffer copy should be considered transitory. [1]

Cablevision's copies were known to exist for as long as 1.2 seconds, but the circuit court did not establish this duration of time as a boundary between "transitory" and "non-transitory". That boundary remains undefined in American copyright law. [3]

Since the parties to the case had already agreed not to argue the matter of contributory copyright infringement, the circuit court next considered whether the buffer copies of programs for the DVR service constituted direct infringement. This required determining who created the copies. While the district court had ruled that Cablevision created the copies, albeit at the request of a specific subscriber, the circuit court disagreed with this analysis. Per the precedent Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communications Services , which established the requirement for "some element of volition or causation" in the creation of a copy, [6] the circuit court found that while Cablevision had some involvement in the process via managing the technology that enabled the copying, its involvement was not "sufficiently proximate" to constitute direct copyright infringement. [1]

The circuit court also disagreed with the district court's finding that the copied programs were transmitted to the public, and instead noted that each copy would only be sent to a particular subscriber who requested it. Thus, the practice did not constitute "public performance" that must be authorized under copyright law. [1] Instead the practice of a single subscriber viewing a program at a later time was found to be time shifting, which is allowable per the Supreme Court precedent Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. [7]

Impact

This ruling is considered to be an important precedent for the applicability of American copyright law toward modern practices of on-demand viewing of entertainment programs, and modern technologies that enable such consumer behavior by temporarily copying copyrighted digital files but not keeping or redistributing them. [8] [9] However, the ruling has also been criticized for encouraging abuse of copyright law in its failure to draw clear boundaries when measuring the duration of "transitory" or "temporary" copies of copyrighted digital files. [10] [11]

Related Research Articles

Grokster Ltd. was a privately owned software company based in Nevis, West Indies that created the Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing client in 2001 that used the FastTrack protocol. Grokster Ltd. was rendered extinct in late 2005 by the United States Supreme Court's decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. The court ruled against Grokster's peer-to-peer file sharing program for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, effectively forcing the company to cease operations.

MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled unanimously that the defendants, peer-to-peer file sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast, could be held liable for inducing copyright infringement by users of their file sharing software. The plaintiffs were a consortium of 28 entertainment companies, led by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

<i>A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.</i> US legal case

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 was a landmark intellectual property case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the defendant, peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster, could be held liable for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement of copyright. This was the first major case to address the application of copyright laws to peer-to-peer file sharing.

<i>In re Aimster Copyright Litigation</i>

In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334 F.3d 643, was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit addressed copyright infringement claims brought against Aimster, concluding that a preliminary injunction against the file-sharing service was appropriate because the copyright owners were likely to prevail on their claims of contributory infringement, and that the services could have non-infringing users was insufficient reason to reverse the district court's decision. The appellate court also noted that the defendant could have limited the quantity of the infringements if it had eliminated an encryption system feature, and if it had monitored the use of its systems. This made it so that the defense did not fall within the safe harbor of 17 U.S.C. § 512(i). and could not be used as an excuse to not know about the infringement. In addition, the court decided that the harm done to the plaintiff was irreparable and outweighed any harm to the defendant created by the injunction.

Performing rights are the right to perform music in public. It is part of copyright law and demands payment to the music's composer/lyricist and publisher. Performances are considered "public" if they take place in a public place and the audience is outside of a normal circle of friends and family, including concerts nightclubs, restaurants etc. Public performance also includes broadcast and cable television, radio, and any other transmitted performance of a live song.

Network DVR (NDVR), or network personal video recorder (NPVR), or remote storage digital video recorder (RS-DVR) is a network-based digital video recorder (DVR) stored at the provider's central location rather than at the consumer's private home. Traditionally, media content was stored in a subscriber's set-top box hard drive, but with NDVR the service provider owns a large number of servers, on which the subscribers' media content is stored. The term RS-DVR is used by Cablevision for their version of this technology.

<i>Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd.</i> U.S. legal case

Vault Corporation v Quaid Software Ltd. 847 F.2d 255 is a case heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that tested the extent of software copyright. The court held that making RAM copies as an essential step in utilizing software was permissible under §117 of the Copyright Act even if they are used for a purpose that the copyright holder did not intend. It also applied the "substantial noninfringing uses" test from Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. to hold that Quaid's software, which defeated Vault's copy protection mechanism, did not make Quaid liable for contributory infringement. It held that Quaid's software was not a derivative work of Vault's software, despite having approximately 30 characters of source code in common. Finally, it held that the Louisiana Software License Enforcement Act clause permitting a copyright holder to prohibit software decompilation or disassembly was preempted by the Copyright Act, and was therefore unenforceable.

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the "Betamax case", is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but can instead be defended as fair use. The court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, such as Betamax or other VCRs, cannot be liable for contributory infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market, as it created a legal safe harbor for the technology.

<i>Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.</i> 2007 American legal decision

Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving a copyright infringement claim against Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc., by the magazine publisher Perfect 10, Inc. The court held that framing and hyperlinking of original images for use in an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, and thus not an infringement of the magazine's copyright ownership of the original images.

<i>Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc.</i>

Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc., 907 F. Supp. 1361, is a U.S. district court case about whether the operator of a computer bulletin board service ("BBS") and Internet access provider that allows that BBS to reach the Internet should be liable for copyright infringement committed by a subscriber of the BBS. The plaintiff Religious Technology Center ("RTC") argued that defendant Netcom was directly, contributorily, and vicariously liable for copyright infringement. Netcom moved for summary judgment, disputing RTC's claims and raising a First Amendment argument and a fair use defense. The district court of the Northern District of California concluded that RTC's claims of direct and vicarious infringement failed, but genuine issues of fact precluded summary judgment on contributory liability and fair use.

<i>CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc.</i>

CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F.3d 544, is a United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decision about whether LoopNet should be held directly liable for CoStar Group’s copyrighted photographs posted by LoopNet’s subscribers on LoopNet’s website. The majority of the court ruled that since LoopNet was an Internet service provider ("ISP") that automatically and passively stored material at the direction of users, LoopNet did not copy the material in violation of the Copyright Act. The majority of the court also held that the screening process by a LoopNet employee before the images were stored and displayed did not alter the passivity of LoopNet. Justice Gregory dissented, stating that LoopNet had engaged in active, volitional conduct because of its screening process.

<i>MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.</i> Court case in the United States

MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc and Vivendi Games, Inc., 629 F.3d 928, is a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At the district court level, MDY had been found liable under theories of copyright and tort law for selling software that contributed to the breach of Blizzard's End User License Agreement (EULA) and Terms of Use (ToU) governing the World of Warcraft video game software.
The court's ruling was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reversed the district court in part, upheld in part, and remanded for further proceedings. The Court of Appeals ruled that for a software licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the license condition and the licensor’s exclusive rights of copyright. However, the court also ruled, contrary to Chamberlain v. Skylink, that a finding of circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require a nexus between circumvention and actual copyright infringement.

<i>Capitol Records, Inc. v. MP3Tunes, LLC</i> 2011 US legal case

Capitol Records, Inc. v. MP3tunes, LLC is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concerning copyright infringement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In the case, EMI Music Group and fourteen other record companies claimed copyright infringement against MP3tunes, which provides online music storage lockers, and MP3tunes's founder, Michael Robertson. In a decision that has ramifications for the future of online locker services, the court held that MP3tunes qualifies for safe harbor protection under the DMCA. However, the court found MP3tunes to still be liable for contributory copyright infringement in this case due to its failure to remove infringing songs after receiving takedown notices. The court also held that Robertson is liable for songs he personally copied from unauthorized websites.

Fixation in Canadian copyright law is a threshold consideration that must be used in copyright infringement cases by courts to determine if copyright actually exists.

<i>Flava Works Inc. v. Gunter</i> 2012 US decision on copyright infringement

Flava Works, Inc v. Gunter, 689 F.3d 754, is a decision by the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, authored by Judge Richard Posner, which held that Marques Gunter, the sole proprietor of the site myVidster.com, a social bookmarking website that enables its users to share videos posted elsewhere online through embedded frames, was not liable for its users' sharing and embedding of copyrighted videos. The court of appeals reversed the decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which had granted a preliminary injunction against myVidster, citing sufficient knowledge of infringement on Gunter's part, while denying safe harbor defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The Court held that Gunter was not directly liable because the copyrighted content was not stored on myVidster's servers, and was not contributorily liable because there was no evidence that conduct by myVidster increased the amount of infringement.

<i>Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena</i>

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena, 839 F.Supp. 1552 (1993) was a copyright infringement case decided by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, holding that the unauthorized online distribution of copied photographs was copyright infringement; and that removing a magazine's trademark from copied images was trademark infringement.

Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network, LLC is a copyright case in which the United States District Court for the Central District of California, by granting partial summary judgment, denied most parts of the copyright claims presented by Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox) against Dish Network (Dish) for its service, a DVR-like device that allowed users to record programming that could be accessed later through any Internet-connected device. The service offered by Dish also allowed users to record any or all Fox's prime-time programs and to automatically skips commercials (AutoHop).

<i>Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung</i>

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung 710 F.3d 1020 No. 10-55946, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case in which seven film studios including Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney and Twentieth Century Fox sued Gary Fung, the owner of isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc., for contributory infringement of their copyrighted works. The panel affirmed in part and vacated in part the decision of United States District Court for the Central District of California that the services and websites offered by isoHunt Web Technologies allowed third parties to download infringing copies of Columbia's works. Ultimately, Fung had "red flag knowledge" of the infringing activity on his systems, and therefore IsoHunt was held ineligible for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act § 512(c) safe harbor.

American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc, 573 U.S. 431 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case. The Court ruled that the service provided by Aereo, which allowed subscribers to view live and time-shifted streams of over-the-air television on Internet-connected devices, violated copyright laws.

InstantTV is a cloud software digital video recorder (DVR) operated by RecordTV Pte Ltd based in Singapore. The company was founded by Carlos Nicholas Fernandes in 2007 and previously offered services as RecordTV.com.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc. Archived April 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine , 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008).
  2. 1 2 MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F. 2d 511 (9th Cir,, 1993).
  3. 1 2 3 Zohar Efroni - The Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings & Cablevision Systems Stanford Law School: Center for Internet and Society.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Twentieth Century Fox Film v. Cablevision Sys., 478 F. Supp. 2d 607 (S.D.N.Y., 2007).
  5. ↑ 17 USC § 101
  6. ↑ Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc. , 907F. Supp.1361 (N.D. Cal.1995).
  7. ↑ Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. , 464 U.S. 417 (1984). PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from this U.S government document.
  8. ↑ David Johnson, DOJ Asks U.S. Supreme Court Not to Hear Case with Potential Major Impact on Cloud-Computing Copyright Issues Archived December 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine , Digital Media Lawyer Blog (June 3, 2009).
  9. ↑ Harman, Jesse (2009). "Drawing a Line between Direct and Contributory Copyright Infringement: The Second Circuit's Take on a Copying Service Provider's Direct Liability in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings". DePaul Journal of Art, Technology and Intellectual Property Law. 19 (2): 397–420 – via HeinOnline.
  10. ↑ Hugard, Michelle (2010). "Lost in Transitory Duration: A Look at Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings, Inc. and Its Implications for Future Copyright Infringement Cases". U.C. Davis Law Review. 43 (4): 1491–1528 – via HeinOnline.
  11. ↑ Vidiksis, Christopher (2009). "How to Buffer Your Way out of a Scrape: Potential Abuse of the Cartoon Network v. Cablevision Decision". Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law. 4 (1): 139–176 – via HeinOnline.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.