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  • 8:30

    • 10 out of 10
    • Weather Report
    • This is Weather Reports quintessential line-up captured live. Jaco Pastorious and Peter Erskine join Wayne Shorter and, of course, Joe Zawinul to create this masterpiece.
  • King James Version

    • 4 out of 10
    • Harvey Danger
    • The sophomore effort from Harvey Danger, I was really looking forward to this followup to "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?" Unfortunately, "King James Version" failed to deliver any of the bri

  • The Printz

    • 8 out of 10
    • Bumblebeez 81
    • Part white rap, part alternative, part pop, and part rock, the Bumblebeez grabbed a hold of me with "Pony Ride," and didn't let go.

      This group does a marvelous job of moving seamlessly be

  • Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

    • 8 out of 10
    • Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
    • When I first got hooked to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the only place I could get their debut album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, was through the band's Web site. I listened to the two tracks a

  • Abnormal Anonymous

    • 8 out of 10
    • Congo Norvell
    • Very few albums manage to capture snapshots of a quality of life in the manner that Congo Norvell's sophomore record, "Abnormals Anonymous," does.

      Comparisons to the Velvet Underground are

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News

Court of Appeals Says Network DVRs Don’t Infringe Copyrights

A U.S. Court of appeals has ruled that Cablevision can, in fact, offer DVRs in the cloud, eliminating the hardware necessary in the viewers’ homes. That technology, strongly opposed by the media companies, removes a significant cost and hardware burden for the cable companies and also gives them a competitive advantage against satellite providers. The case may go to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, said that the so-called network DVRs do not infringe the copyrights of the plaintiffs, including Hollywood studios who sued the cable operator. It can simply be viewed as a traditional DVR on a very long wire.

A network DVR essentially removes the hard disk from the user’s living room and supplies equivalent capability electronically in the cable company’s computers. Because it requires a direct connection, satellite carriers can’t provide that service.

"This is a tremendous victory for consumers, which will allow us to make DVRs available to many more people, faster and less expensively than would otherwise be possible," said Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge in the Multichannel news story. "We appreciate the Court’s perspective that, from the standpoint of existing copyright law, remote-storage DVRs are the same as the traditional DVRs that are in use today,"

Craig Moffett, an analyst with Berstein Research, said in a note to investors that Cablevison’s technology avoids direct liability for copyright infringement. It also makes it possible to provide a virtual DVR to every cable subscriber with much simpler hardware. That, in turn, could result in a surge in DVR use as well as more pervasive ad skipping.

Mr. Moffett noted that the plaintiffs would have been wise to agree to network DVRs, but stipulate that that those DVRs couldn’t skip ads.

Even so, with the facilities of the DVR in the hands of the cable company’s computers, a time could still come when the customers will lose their options and ability to skip ads they don’t wish to view. That’s a tradeoff many will have to make for perhaps a cheaper monthly bill, and some customers will likely opt to keep the power of that hardware DVR in their own living room for some time to come.

If the U.S. Supreme Court sees it differently than the Appeals Court, then it’s back to business as usual. However, if the Supreme Court agrees, some cable customers might then be faced with the eventual need to appeal to the cable company to let them operate their own TiVo if they wish to do so, and that could lead to a whole new battle over viewer’s rights.

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