Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

Legal Green Light for Cloud Computing

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on July 7, 2009

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Jim Burger, Copyright Attorney, Dow, Lohnes

If you would like learn about a recent Supreme Court action providing a legal green light to a future “Networked Economy”, this interview is for you.

Our guest today is Jim Burger who is an attorney with Dow, Lohnes in Washington, D. C. His specialty is intellectual property, including copyright law.

Recently the Supreme Court declined to review an Appellate Court decision that gave Cablevision authority to offer DVR functionality within the network of their physical plant, as opposed to inside discrete boxes installed on subscriber premises. Copyright interests opposed the Appellate Court decision because they argued that Cablevision would be illegally making copies of copyrighted material whenever subscribers chose to record a program. It was an odd argument considering that they have not yet challenged the legality of subscriber-premises DVRs, like TiVo.

Be that as it may, the immediate impact of the Supreme Court action enables Cablevision to offer DVR functionality without having to install DVR units at each participating subscriber. They can merely enable the feature with a software download to the existing cable set-top box. This saves Cablevision the expense of a “truck-roll” to the subscriber’s home for DVR installation. In short, it saves Cablevision installation expenses and also provides mass-storage economies of scale that can reduce operating expenses.

However, Jim believes there is a far greater implication. Specifically, he believes the action will help foster the development of “Cloud Computing”. Consider the case of a consumer with a collection of copyrighted movies on DVDs. Companies may now offer a service enabling the consumer to upload the movies to an “Internet locker” where they can be constantly available via the Internet. The failure to review the Appellate Court implies that the operator of such a service need have no fear of copyright violation.

As media increasingly moves to the Internet it will be crucial that copyright holders be adequately compensated. In our analysis, most consumers are going to choose to watch Internet video in ad-supported formats. To learn more about how this will happen, click here where you can download a free Prospectus of our new market research report, Future Developments in Video Advertising.