Summary Cartoon Network Vs Csc Holdings 3q5s2f

Cartoon network versus CSC Holdings This is a case from the second circuit court in the us about direct copyright infringement Background CSC Holdings is a company that runs the cable provider Cablevision and they where announcing that they would bring a new type of service to its customers. It would be a company hosted recording service which would allow the viewers to record their tv shows and programs, "Remote Storage DVR System." This was similar to many other products that all ready existed such as the Tivo and other digital recording devices. However, there was a major difference, while all those other products involved a physical recording device that was placed in the viewers home the service from Cablevision would not require any recording devices at the viewers home. Instead the viewers would request, with their remote, that Cablevision would start recording a certain part of a tv channel. Cablevision would then store that recording separately on its own server for only that particular customer and when the viewer wanted to see the recorded material they would just request it with their remote and cablevision would send the recording to the viewers TV. There is of course similarities between this and so called Video On Demand services where you can watch a program whenever you want and the cable provider sends it out to you when you request it. The major difference is that cablevision The plaintiffs in the case where Cartoon network and numerous other content providers who argued that this new service would constitute direct copyright infringement, important to note that they only sued for direct copyright infringement and not also contributory copyright infringement. The dispute The plaintiffs argued that Cablevision infringed their copyright in three ways: 1) The buffer data 2) For creating the playback copies on their servers 3) Transmission of RS-DVR Playback The appellate court examined these three grounds: The Buffer Data The data in the buffer, that was needed for the system to work, only

contained no more than 1.2 seconds of recording and was automatically overwritten. The Second Circuit court noted that the Copyright Act requires two conditions for a work to be "fixed" and hence infringing: the work must be both "embodied in a copy or phonorecord" and perceivable "for a period of more than a transitory duration." The Circuit Court thus held that while the data was embodied in the buffer, the duration was sufficiently small to be considered transitory. Therefore this ground did not constitute copyright infringement. Direct Liability for Creating the Playback Copies Edit The important question in determining liability for direct copyright infringement with respect to the copies stored on hard drives in the Cablevision RS-DVR was who made the copies. the Circuit Court found that while Cablevision engaged in some volitional conduct by creating a system which exists only to reproduce conduct, it was not "sufficiently proximate" to the act of copying to be liable for direct infringement. The Circuit Court held that the claims brought by Cartoon Network, et al., were more relevant to claims of contributory infringement, which was not at issue in the case. Therefore this ground did not constitute copyright infringement. Transmission of RS-DVR Playback Edit The court found that the transmit clause directs us to identify the potential audience of a given transmission, i.e., the persons "capable if receiving" it, to determine whether that transmission is made 'to the public." Because each RS-DVR playback transmission is made to a single subscriber using a single unique copy produced by that subscriber, we conclude that such transmissions are not performances "to the public," and therefore do not infringe any exclusive right of public performance. It based its decision on the application of undisputed facts. Therefore this ground did not constitute copyright infringement.