On August 4, 2008, The Second Circuit decided to throw out a lower court’s ruling that blocked Cablevision from introducing a new remote-storage DVR system. The Cablevision DVR lets customers store recorded television shows on a central server, rather than on a hard drive in the customers’ home, like standard DVRs.
Cablevision argued that there was no difference between the remote-storage system and a standard DVR, so it shouldn’t be required to pay additional licensing fees.
Judge John Walker agreed, stating “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.”
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