Network DVR’s lost a key court battle recently, when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal City Studios and others who sued Cablevision in May to stop their network DVR plans. Network DVRs allow remote storage and playback of content versus local storage on a set top box at each individual subscriber premise. It’s a promising technology that offers competitive advantage and efficiency gains for the video service provider.
Once again, content owners and distributiors have demonstrated their market power to control the flow of their product. Life and business is about perspective, and certainly their perspective views network DVR as illegal under current copyright law. Service providers have a different perspective – they see network DVR as a compelling service that will help differentiate them from competitors. This case will probably be heard again, maybe even at the Supreme Court.
Check out this Multichannel News article for more info.