Cartoon, CNN Sue Cablevision
By Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 5/30/2006 5:03:00 PM
Cartoon Network and CNN sued Cablevision Systems Corp. in an attempt to block the company from pursuing plans to roll out a network-based digital-video-recorder service.
The suit, filed last Friday, came two days after several cable networks and Hollywood studios sued Cablevision, seeking an injunction that would prevent the company from continuing with plans to launch a network-DVR service on its Long Island, N.Y., system in June.
Cartoon and CNN asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that the network-DVR service would infringe on its copyrighted programming.
The decision by Cartoon and CNN to enter the fray is noteworthy, considering the fact that executives from its Time Warner Cable corporate sister have said they would also like to roll out a network-based DVR service, which would allow the company to reduce costs in deploying expensive set-tops containing DVR technology.
“Our infrastructure does provide us with the capability to do [network DVR],” Time Warner Cable chief financial officer John Martin said at a Banc of America Securities LLC conference in New York March 30.
Martin said Time Warner Cable would offer such a service if it proved legal.
Time Warner Cable also experimented with technology similar to Cablevision’s network-DVR service through its now-defunct Mystro TV project. The difference with Mystro TV was that Time Warner planned to obtain rights from TV networks to offer their programming on-demand, through remote servers, Time Warner Inc. spokesman Ed Adler said.
Cablevision has argued that it does not need to obtain additional rights from TV networks that it carries for the network-DVR service, since the network DVR would function like DVRs contained in cable set-tops.
The complaint filed by CNN and Cartoon last Friday included a letter that Turner Broadcasting System Inc. general counsel Louise Sams sent Cablevision senior vice president of programming Mac Budill May 10 in which she warned that Turner would “reserve all right to seek any equitable or legal remedies available” if Cablevision continued with its plan for a network-DVR service.
Plaintiffs in the original network-DVR suit filed against Cablevision last Wednesday were 20th Century Fox Film Corp., Universal City Studios, Paramount Pictures, Disney Enterprises, CBS Broadcasting, ABC Inc. and NBC Studios.
Cablevision has described the original DVR suit as “without merit,” saying that it “reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Cablevision’s remote-storage DVR and ignores the benefits and well-established right of viewers to time-shift television programming.”
