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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.
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
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."
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".
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!