Out of the ashes of one MVPD wannabe rises another.
To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the MVPD wannabe ends, not with a bang but a whimper. . . and a $1.6 million settlement payment.
You remember FilmOn.com. They’re the folks who were going to revolutionize the video biz by legally delivering broadcast signals via the Internet . . . until they got immediately sued for copyright infringement by the major broadcast networks.
“Oh, you mean Aereo, right?”, you reply.
That would be the Barry Diller-financed entity that captures broadcast signals via a series of individual antennas, stores them on individually assigned remote DVRs and allows subscribers to watch programming in (almost) real time or via delay over the Internet. But, no, they’re not who we’re talking about here. Aereo still exists and has even won the first round in its legal battle against the broadcasters, surviving a motion for preliminary injunction.
“Oh, right . . . you’re talking about ivi TV?”, you protest, referring to the wannabe “first online cable system”. No, not them either (but you’re close).
Though ivi TV may be on its last legs, it still technically exists. ivi TV initially sought (in federal court in the State of Washington) a declaratory judgment that its service does not violate the Copyright Act. It lost. Meanwhile, ivi TV was sued by the major broadcast networks, who won. They sought – and received – a preliminary injunction against ivi TV from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Not one to be stopped by a little injunction, ivi TV has appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Oral argument was held in late May. A decision could come down any time now.)
FilmOn.com is very similar to ivi TV. Started in 2010, it’s an online system claiming to fall within the Copyright Act’s definition of “cable system”. Like ivi TV, FilmOn.com was almost immediately sued by the major broadcast networks and, like ivi TV, it was quickly on the back foot. Within a couple of months of its launch in late 2010, Filmon.com was hit with a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting it from infringing “by any means, directly or indirectly” any copyrighted material. That slowed the service down, but did not stop it immediately.
And now – almost two years later – FilmOn.com has reportedly agreed to a permanent injunction that will apparently require it to stop streaming the signals of the four major networks – at least until FilmOn boards BarryDriller.com (more on that in a moment). Oh, yeah, according to trade press reports, FilmOn.com will also be ponying up about $1.6 million to settle the case.
But that’s not the end of the story. After all, when you’re funded by billionaire Alki David, you’re not going to go away simply because a federal court tells you to. (Possibly instructive anecdote: David is the gentleman who reportedly offered $1 million to the first person who would streak in front of President Obama with “Battlecam.com” – another David enterprise – written across the streaker’s chest.) So, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, “BarryDriller.com” has emerged. BarryDriller.com is David’s new project (which is reportedly being funded by a related company called “AereoKiller, LLC”). BarryDriller.com is said to be “Aereo-like”. Though there are differences (BarryDriller.com will charge subscribers about half of what Aereo charges and claims that it will pay broadcasters for their content), BarryDriller.com is certainly like Aereo in one sense: it’s been in business for just a few days and has already been sued by Fox.
If nothing else, the BarryDriller.com suit is interesting for one reason: its locale. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (because BarryDriller.com was retransmitting KTTV, the Fox affiliate out of Los Angeles). Different city = different court = different governing precedent. While Judge Allison Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was bound by the Second Circuit’s Cablevision DVR decision in ruling for Aereo last month, the Cablevision decision doesn’t have the same weight in the wild, wild west. I’ve said from the start that the endpoint for the Aereo case would be the United States Supreme Court if at least one federal court outside the Second Circuit were to reject the rationale of the Cablevision decision. Such a ruling would set up a “circuit split” that might induce the Supremes to wade into the thicket and sort things out. If nothing else, BarryDriller.com may have accelerated that process by giving the networks the opportunity to sue David and company in California, where the Ninth Circuit is the top federal dog.
