ivi Goes For The Throat

Got an interesting email last week from a company called ivi.  (yes, that’s a lower-case “i”.)  Maybe you got it too.  It contained a link to an application for Windows computers which allows them to receive the over-the-air broadcast signals of stations around the US.  The initial list is pretty comprehensive, including network affiliates in New York City and Seattle.  I downloaded the app, and it is really pretty slick, with decent (but certainly not HD) picture quality.  The business plan seems to be to charge users $5 a month or so for access to scads of TV channels over the Internet.

Of course, most of the broadcasters in the US look poorly on anyone re-transmitting their stuff.  But the interesting twist to ivi is that, instead of waiting for the network lawyers to come disembowel them, they are taking the fight to the networks - through the court system.  As soon as the service launched, ivi was snowed in with a blizzard of cease-and-desist letters from NBC, ABC/Disney, CBS, WGBH and others.  However, ivi seems to think that re-distribution of broadcast signals over the Internet is allowable due to a gray area in copyright law.  From an ivi press release:

The Complaint states that ivi is legally operating under U.S. Copyright Law. According to section 16 of page 3 of the Complaint, “The Copyright Act expressly authorizes secondary transmissions of copyrighted works embodied in primary transmissions. For example, the Copyright Act expressly approves of the secondary transmission of an original television broadcast where the secondary transmission is subject to a statutory license. Under Section 111 of the Copyright Act, statutory licensing fees are paid periodically to the Register of Copyrights in accordance with an established scale and schedule. Section 111 further provides that the secondary transmission of an over-the-air primary transmission is not an infringement of copyrights in the works contained in the primary transmission.”

So, if I read this right, if ivi pays the federal Register of Copyrights previously-set fees, the airwaves are fair game.  Of course,

I Am Not A Lawyer !!!!! ,

so my interpretation of THEIR interpretation might be (and probably is) flawed. And even if they do win this case, you can assume it won’t take long for the pertinent sections of copyright law to be tightened up and exclude such signal-....  what’s the proper term?  Jacking?  Theft?  Rebroadcast? Entrepreneurialism?

Keep an eye on ivi.  Even if they get crushed, this is a subject that is going to come up over and over in the next few years.

And by the way…

I Am Not A Lawyer !!!!!

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