No copyright: says Hollywood

Now the clutches of the copyright are in the hand of the Hollywood studios. The U.S District Court has granted preliminary injunction to VidAngel, a movie streaming and filtering services on the ground of violating the copyright of the Hollywood Studios. The Court held that by communicating the videos of the Hollywood Studios infringe the copyright owned by these studios.

The issue herein arises as to what kind of rights gets transferred in these kind of communication to the viewers.  The Plaintiff contended that defendant violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, 1998. But the defendant argued that the carrying out and the space shifting done by the defendant fall within the legal ambit of the Act. Such argument would hold well only if the act was done with the permission of the copyright holder.

Furthermore, the Court held that the digital content that the defendant streamed was not from an authorized source, as the exemption under the Act only allows limited filtering of the motion pictures and not the entire picture.

The plaintiff also claimed exclusive right of communication to the public as which was alleged to be violated by the defendant by creating intermediate copies of the motion pictures. The defendant’s fair use defense was also rejected as the same did not add or altered the character of the plaintiff.

This decision has far reaching implication as to the first sale doctrine in the digital era and the buyers right would be hard to ascertain against their claim to have bought the content of the discs.