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Zediva Shut Down By Federal Judge, MPAA Parties!
AlienIntelligence writes "Looks like the loophole that Zediva founded their business model on evaporated. Zediva's biggest problem was getting over a 1991 ruling against a similar method of transmitting copyright works. Zediva has vowed to appeal the ruling."
He who gives gold to Congressional and Presidential election campaigns makes the rules.
And $111 million is a lot of gold.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is common to ignore the letter of the law in favor of the "spirit" of the law. And the spirit of copyright law is protection of the movie industry against all little people and all disruptive technology.
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Twenty years ago, it was decided this wasn't legal. They decided to do it anyway and were shut down. This somehow makes content owners evil.
Do I have the facts straight?
For folks who've never heard of Zediva, they apparently let customers stream newly released movies. Their business model was that the customers rent the DVD and DVD player which are both located at their facility, and the customers access them over the Internet. Clever approach, but this shutdown should be of no surprise.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Yes, because that is an actual covered exception under the first sale doctrine. Streaming the movie over the Internet to people is on the other hand not a covered exception.
Nothing about the ruling in On Command was binding on this court, so I'm not sure why everyone thinks the argument was ridiculous. I think it's absurd to construe the prohibition against transmitting copyrighted acts to "the public" as encompassing this activity. How is someone sitting at home on their computer "the public"? It is clear that Congress intended, by this phrase, to prohibit transmitting of copyrighted works to the public at large, not to individual people for individual use.
It's legal to rent DVDs to people. It's legal to rent DVD players to people. It's legal to rent DVDs, DVD players and viewing space to people. But it's not legal to rent a DVD and DVD player to someone to use at a distance. That defies logic.
Except they don't rebroadcast to multiple customers at the same time. For each person watching the DVD at a time, Zediva has one copy and one DVD player. Its almost identical to renting the physical copy of the movie, but without actually sending them the disc itself. So its nothing like broadcasting, except it occurs at a distance.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
from TFA:
"Only one person can rent a DVD at one time, meaning that if Zediva bought 20 copies of a movie, only 20 people can watch it simultaneously. Still, Zediva saves money because it could serve many more customers with the same physical copy of a DVD than a company that has to mail out a DVD and wait for its return. "
So they're not using a single DVD to broadcast to multiple people simultaneously; they are basically a renting organization that is very similar to RedBox except it is done through streaming and online purchasing but the limitation is still a 1:1 ratio of viewer-to-physical dvd copy. Ask yourself this: if Redbox has 20 copies of a movie and every day 20 people rent it and return it (some the same day, some after a day or two), how is this different than Zediva's business model other than the online factor vs. physical stand?
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
So Zediva thought they could purchase a single DVD and re-broadcast the content to multiple customers, essentially relying on a very loose interpretation of the first sale doctrine and avoid paying the same licensing fees as Netflix or Amazon.
If the MPAA didn’t take them to court, then Amazon or Netflix or Redbox, hell the entire legitimate broadcast industry would have.
No. The person renting the video has exclusive use of the DVD (and DVD player) for the period of their rental, which would generally be about the length of the movie. Two people can't be watching the same movie at the same time unless Zediva purchased two copies of the video, just like a physical rental store. Except for the obvious savings because the rental period only lasts as long as the person is watching the video, and it is instantly "returned" when they are finished, it is no different in this respect than renting a physical disc from a brick-and-mortar.
Basically the same as Netflix video by mail, except instead of physically sending the discs through the mail all the discs are kept and played at a central location and only the output is streamed to the renter.
It appears that the judge in the case feels there is a clear-cut and legally established difference between renting the physical media and playing it in private, and renting the physical media in one location and broadcasting it to another, private location. Even though there is a physical disc dedicated to the person watching the video, the transmission of the video instead of the physical media makes it a public performance, and therefore requires a specific license agreement from the media's owner.
I do wonder if a similar argument could be used to upend the burgeoning cloud-based-player industry; on the one hand it seems like a similar theme, on the other the cloud-based player is only sending the the digital file that the seller is (presumably) licensed to distribute - there is no pesky original physical media that is supposed to be carted around, only the digital file.
1) You are renting a video player which is located in the store and provide exclusive access to you while renting through an encrypted virtual interface
2) You are separately renting a movie
3) You ask as delivery method that someone is placing your rented movie inside your rented dvd player
4) You connect the rented player to your display unit
5) You see the movie
Streaming was done by you from your equipment to your equipment. The streaming can in this case not be said to be done by the store, as it is solely initiated by the client from his own rented player with his own rented physical media. I don't see how this can be illegal. Maybe I did not understand it right, and they don't rent the player out separate from the movie? In that case there might be problems...
How is "transmitting" the video over the Internet any different than "transmitting" it over an HDMI cable from a local DVD player to a television? In both cases, bits are being moved, and only one person has access to them.
I hate how convoluted copyright law has become.
No, not exactly. Their claim to legitimacy was that they purchased dozens of copies of each DVD, and thousands of DVD players paired to slingbox-type products. When the user rented the DVD, the DVD was loaded into a player, plugged into the internet streamer, and unicast to the subscriber. That DVD and DVD player were inaccessible to any other user during that time. It behaved just like a normal rental, except the subscriber did not have to physically go and pick up the DVD. The only real difference between this and a traditional rental service is the turnover rate per disc is much higher.
The 12-page injunction took issue with nearly every argument Zediva made in its defense, and even went further, arguing that since Zediva's users could occasionally encounter movies that were "out of stock," consumers would be confused about how streaming video services work, potentially ruining the market for Hollywood.
Oddly, Martin also argued that Zediva's service, which charges per movie, could cause "confusion or doubt regarding whether payment is required for access to the Copyrighted Works."
It was that Zediva was playing movies for other people (and taking money for it) without having the public performance rights to do so. This is the same principle that stops someone from opening a movie theatre and just buying a DVD of each movie they want to show. The 1991 case said a hotel can't get around that by having a bunch of VCRs and sending the output of each to a single hotel room, and the judge for the Zediva case found this to be no different. And he's right.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Really, they are within the actual spirit of the law as well. Video rental is intentionally legal. The only thing they violate is the will of the MPAA and their hired lapdogs.
Can we stop using the word "broadcast" to refer to long-distance, point-to-point communications, please? If we keep using these terms wrong, we shouldn't be surprised when judges arrive at absurd conclusions about laws which are concerned with "broadcasting".
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