It seems that DVD streaming service, Zediva is losing their legal battle. On Monday a federal judge, John F. Walter, issued a preliminary injunction against the streaming company. The MPAA is obviously thrilled.
Judge John F. Walter wrote, "Defendants are violating Plaintiffs’ exclusive right to publicly perform their Copyrighted Works." The judge cited a case from 1991 in which it was decided that a hotel’s video on demand service violated copyright laws. In this case the hotel was allowing users to choose a movie from their hotel room and they would stream it to the room via a bank of VCRs in a central location in the hotel. Apparently the ruling in that case was that the hotel was streaming video “to the public” even though it was to one person in their hotel room.
Zediva obviously tried to argue their point stating that they are just a plain old DVD rental service with the benefit of allowing the DVDs to be streamed to their customers. Zediva buys DVDs legally, but the difference is that they essentially hook DVD players up to the internet for viewings. A customer essentially rents a DVD player and a movie and that film is streamed to them via the web.
Obviously Hollywood isn’t a fan of this brand of logic and a lawsuit was brought against Zediva in April of this year. The argument against Zediva was simply that the company was infringing on their rights to control the public performance of films.
Judge Walter clearly agreed with Hollywood in this case and was really not impressed with Zediva’s arguments. Walter argued that the harm Zediva was doing to movie studios outweighed the harm that will be potentially done to Zediva’s business due to the injunction.
The MPAA is quite happy with the ruling, thinking of it as a major victory for the film industry. Dan Robbins said the case was, "a great victory for the more than two million American men and women whose livelihoods depend on a thriving film and television industry."
Zediva is claiming they will appeal the ruling saying,
"Today's ruling represents a setback for the hundreds of thousands of consumers looking for an alternative to Hollywood-controlled online movie services," the company wrote in a statement, pledging to stand up for "consumers' right to watch a DVD they've rented, whether that rental is at the corner store or by mail or over the Internet."
