Cablevision Systems Corp. said on Tuesday it is filing an appeal of a recent U.S. court ruling barring it from launching a digital video recorder service that stores television shows on its servers.
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,” he added.
Cablevision – silly people – believed that recording movies and programs which they already pay licensing fees for was allowable. They wanted to offer a video-on-demand service as an alternative to set-top DVR’s.
The media companies want more license fees paid – to use the existing license fees.
From what I understand, to put it simply, Cablevision is saying that since the cable viewer can theoretically tape anything and everything for unlimited viewing and time shifting, Cablevision will make it easier on the end user by recording everything they (re)transmit (on their central servers) and make it available “on demand” to their viewers.
One can see that, regardless of legality, it would completely disrupt the the entertainment business. What happens to the concept of syndicated television (meaning non-first run)? Will there be a market for DVD’s? What happens to the commercials first delivered with the original broadcast (what would have been saved on the viewers DVR)? It’s definitely opening a can of worms.
I believe this disruption would be ultimately harmful to consumers, as content producers would have to charge cable companies (and thus viewers) up front for everything they provide, to compensate for the future revenue loss in DVD’s and syndication.
And I see no arguments about revenue loss. If I had a VCR that could record all channels, at all times, that I am legally allowed to receive (either through cable payments, or over the air broadcasts), I would never buy the DVD’s, or need to watch the syndicated versions of the shows again. Never. You can make your own arguments, but with something like Sienfeld, Simpsons, Buffy TVS, all shows I have purchased DVD’s for, I wouldn’t have purchased the DVD’s if I had digital copies of the original broadcasts. I don’t care what additional features are on the DVD, increased resolution, whatever, personally, the industry would have lost my revenue.
This forum definitely comes down hard on Intellectual Property providers, and how they get adequately compensated for their works. Every day, the concept of the Star Trek “replicator” becomes more and more realistic, and I truly think that our culture and civilization will suffer from it. When everybody can own an exact replica of everything, we may have a more egalitarian world, but the lack of incentives (financial and otherwise) will be a the minimum, problematic.
I hate Cablevision.
Not because of remote DVR’s, but because they ran my beloved Knicks into the ground. Ugh!