Jody Simon was quoted in the Daily Journal article, "Dish Ruling May Provide Leverage to TV Content Carriers, Lawyers Say." Full text can be found in the January 22, 2015, issue, but a synopsis is below.
Consumer-friendly entertainment technology developers can now take heart in a federal judge's ruling that Dish Network LLC's commercial-skipping DVR and multiscreen access service does not infringe Fox Broadcasting Company Inc.'s copyrights.
Although Dish didn't break copyright laws, the judge found that its Slingbox service, which allows Dish subscribers to transfer shows from their TV screens to other devices did violate a provision of its contract with Fox that stated the broadcaster's programming should not leave subscribers' homes.
The difference with Slingbox is that unlike the U.S. Supreme Court's Aereo decision this past summer, Dish obtained a distribution license to send the broadcast content to its subscribers. At that point, subscribers should be free to further retransmit the content to another personal device so long as they do not publicly distribute it.
As for AutoHop, Dish's DVR that records primetime TV shows while ridding of the commercials, the judge took issue with device undermining the essence of Fox's advertisement-driven business by taking out the commercials instead of making the viewer at least fast-forward, as "simply too speculative to defeat a finding a fair use."
Jody Simon noted that the ruling could immediately impact other content carriers "who have hung back and waited until the litigation ended to make their own AutoHop."
"The ruling is a challenge to advertisers and one of the many challenges to the traditional broadcast TV model," explained Simon.
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