US cable operator Cablevision is to appeal against a ruling last month from a New York federal district court that found that its network-DVR would violate the copyrights of studios and networks. The company said it will file today at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
“We continue to believe strongly that remote-storage DVR is permissible under current copyright law and offers significant benefits to consumers, including lower costs and faster deployment of this popular technology to our digital-cable customers,” Cablevision chief operating officer Tom Rutledge said in a prepared statement regarding the appeal.
Network-DVRs have been controversial since the beginning. In theory they do little more than store content for consumers at a remote location rather than at a DVR in the home. Studios and broadcasters have been protesting against them ever since. In Germany, RTL won a court case against a web-based German remote-PVR.