Cablevision Wins DVR Court Battle

NEW YORK, August 5:
Cablevision Systems Corporation, which announced today that it may spin off
some of its assets, has won a legal battle over its remote-storage DVR.

A federal appeals court
has given the cable provider the legal go-ahead to roll out the offering
(although it is not clear when it will do so), overturning a previous ruling
blocking the service. In the prior decision at a lower court, a judge sided
with a group of Hollywood studios claiming that the box, which stores content
on remote servers rather on a hard drive in the home, amounted to unauthorized
retransmission of content by the platform. The federal court, meanwhile, found
“the person who actually presses the button to make the recording supplies the
necessary element of volition, not the person who manufactures, maintains, or,
if distinct from the operator, owns the machine. Cablevision more closely
resembles a store proprietor who charges customers to use a photocopier on his
premises, and it seems incorrect to say, without more, that such a proprietor
'makes' any copies when his machines are actually operated by his customers.”

The move will allow
Cablevision to rapidly expand its DVR base, without the need to replace the
set-top boxes currently in subscribers’ homes.

In other Cablevision news,
the board of directors has elected to “explore several strategies for bringing
the market value of the company's common stock more closely in line with the
underlying operating performance of the company.” As part of the strategic
review, the company is mulling spinning off one or more of its businesses,
which include a triple-play provider in New York, a suite of cable networks
through Rainbow Media Holdings, the Newsday publishing group, sports teams and several venues,
including Madison Square Garden.

—By Mansha Daswani