Zediva Fights Back Against MPAA

MoldySpore writes "When Zediva burst onto the streaming scene earlier this year, they managed to do something nobody else was doing. Navigating around the copyright law, they found a way to stream rental movies not currently available on other services, because they were still inside the DVD sales window, and filled a role not currently part of the competitions' services. The service grants a 'rental' of the physical movie to the user, who is then able to stream it over the internet, usually with the option to re-rent after being played. By having it be a rental service, they were able to avoid some of the legalese associated with streaming movies outside of that sales window. Needless to say the MPAA was not pleased. But instead of making nice with the MPAA, Zediva has decided to fight back in the form of expensive legal heavy-hitters from 'elite San Francisco law firm Durie Tangri,' which has forced the MPAA to hire their own team of expensive legal ninjas. Zediva argues what most technologically informed people would when looking at this service: that they are essentially a rental service who are renting physical media, and providing the DVD player and a very long cable to the renter's TV."

Good ol' MPAA

[ackthpt]

Someone sneaks around behind all their dirty little tricks and they don't like it.

Comes with the territory, boys.

There Is No Cat...

[NotSanguine]

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
--Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio.

Everything old is new again :)

[AEton]

Hey, guys, for a good time, have a look at On Command Video Corp. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, 777 F. Supp. 787 (N.D. Cal. 1991) [mit.edu].

On Command was doing literally this exact thing, but 20 years ago and (1) with VCRs instead of DVD players; (2) with the VCRs at the hotel front desk and you in your hotel room, instead of with the DVD players in California and you anywhere on the Internet.

Things did not work out well for On Command. However, the legal landscape has changed somewhat in more recent years -- a more relevant ruling might be the 2008 Cablevision DVR case (see discussion e.g. at http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2008/08/cablevision-wins-on-appeal-remote-dvr-lawful-after-all.ars [arstechnica.com].

Re:There Is No Cat...

[Hatta]

I think the way it works is that he's both ok with it AND against it, until you ask him.