Five ReplayTV owners, represented by the EFF, are striving to obtain legal affirmation that ReplayTV users are not thieves or copyright infringers; the parties filed a lawsuit Thursday against 27 movie and TV studios. If the suit's successful, the entertainment industry would have little proof to back up its lawsuit claiming SONICblue, maker of ReplayTV, assists in copyright infringement.
At stake is the legality of automatically skipping commercials and "space shifting," the trading or transferring of TV shows and movies from one device to another. On one side, there's Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner, who asserts that "Any time you skip a commercial...you're actually stealing the programming." ("There's a certain amount of tolerance" for going to the bathroom, he said.) On the other side, there's the likes of EFF IP Attorney Fred von Lohmann-- who said the Hollywood v. SONICblue case is "just as alarming as the Betamax case of the 1980s when Hollywood tried to ban VCRs."-- and Congressman Rick Boucher (D, Va.), who told USA Today, "Surely there's no law that says you have to watch commercials."
The five ReplayTV plaintiffs are Craig Newmark, founder of San Francisco-based Craigslist.org; Keith Ogden, a San Francisco-area broker; Glenn Fleishman, a Washington journalist; Phil Wright, a Calif. video editor; and Shawn Hughes, an electrical contractor in Georgia.
This newest lawsuit is part of the ongoing battle between Hollywood and the tech industry and its consumers, which The Washington Post covers in a thorough, concise overview. Further coverage of what has been deemed the "Craig v. Hollywood case" is at LawMeme, Wired.com and Mercury News.
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