Rights of intellectual property in a digital age is a cause for concern when new technologies such as the personal video recorder (PVR), creates easy access to copy and share digital data. Although not all PVR units condone such behaviour, the SONICblue’s ReplayTV patent-infringement lawsuit was a well-documented legal battle which took place in America in 2001-2002.
The Replay 4000 contained the capabilities to completely delete commercials and send a high quality copies via the internet up to 15 times. Multiple entities Disney, NBC, Paramount, Showtime and Viacom Corporations in a joint law-suit cited the Replay 4000 is an "unlawful scheme attacks the fundamental economic underpinning’s of free television."
(http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~peterson/197T/readings/Week%202%20Readings/hettrick.htm, Accessed 28 Oct 2004)
The U.S. District Court required proof that the Replay 4000 users were infringing on copyright laws, thus on May 26th, 2002 the courts ordered ReplayTV to invade the privacy of their customers by collating tracking data. The request of the order said SONICblue had 60 days to:
1. “take the steps necessary to use their broadband connections with ReplayTV 4000 customers to gather all available information about how users of the ReplayTV employ the devices, including all available information about what works are copied, stored, viewed with commercials omitted, or distributed to third parties with the ReplayTV 4000, when each of those events took place, and the like;
2. implement Defendants' offer to collect available data from a second source -- the MyReplayTV.com web site -- about how users of the ReplayTV employ the devices, but for all time periods for which that data can be collected, rather than just for a short period;
3. provide the foregoing data to Plaintiffs in a readily-understandable electronic format and provide any technical assistance that may be necessary for Plaintiffs to review the data;
4. provide Plaintiffs with all documents about Defendants' consideration of what data to gather or not to gather about their customers' uses of the ReplayTV 4000; and
5. provide Plaintiffs with any other documents (such as emails or logs) reflecting what works have been copied with the ReplayTV 4000 and how those works have been stored, viewed, or distributed.� (http://cs-www.bu.edu/~dm/pubs/replaytv.html, Accessed 26 Oct 2004)
Fortunately for SONICblue, the lawsuit was dismissed on May 31st 2002, another judge overruling the original request because it “impermissibly required defendants to create new data in order to comply.� (http://cs-www.bu.edu/~dm/pubs/replaytv.html, Accessed 26 Oct 2004) This lawsuit set the precedent for the future of digital content because it demonstrated the PVR technology was not too detrimental form of technology in our future.
REFERENCES
Hettrick, S. (2002) “Media giants sue ReplayTV,� retrieved October 28, 2004, from
this source.
Martin, D. (2002) “Court orders SONICblue to develop and deploy spyware for Big Media,� retrieved October 26, 2004, fromthis source.
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Linda Wong 08:43, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
