Copyright infringement or ingenious entrepreneurship? You be the judge

[thatcrazycajun]

Read this story from Techdirt.com, all you legal eagles on my f-list, and tell me what you think. If a truck-stop chain airs TV shows in its establishments and runs commercials it sells to advertisers seeking to target truckers over the ones sold by networks and cable channels to their advertisers, is this actually copyright infringement? And if so, would this extend to viewers at home skipping ads using their VCR or TiVo? Or Websurfers using adblockers in their browsers? The possibilities for litigation positively boggle the mind.

Comments

[musicmutt.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting case. My take on it doesn't really fall into copyright infringement as I understand it. This being reproducing and selling someone else's work. Where it does get touchy is inserting their own ads over network ads which advertisers have already bought and paid for. I would consider this to be an obstruction of business more than a copyright issue. They may have worked something out with Flying J, but they are a truck stop and they don't have the broadcasting license. As such they are not in a position to sell ad space. If they have worked out something where they have set up their own channel, buying their own programming and airing them at their truck stops, then okay they can sell ad space and air ads but there wouldn't be a legal issue if this were the case.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that selling their own ads (either in place of or in addition to the ones bundled with the programming) could be considered unauthorized commercial use of the programming. (Insert cleverly-worded IANAL disclaimer here)

Need to read the case

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I would need to read the text of the case before answering.

What is at stake here is the public performance right. Under an initial Supreme Court ruling, copyright did not apply to the showing of television or playing of radio in a public place because the rights holder, by broadcasting the content to anyone capable of receiving it, had given permission for it to be viewed by everyone. Congress reversed this, and legislatively declared that a business deliberately making a broadcast signal available to its customers was infringing the public performance right of the rights holder.

The problem is that a different set of rules apply to subscription services than to broadcast, because there are additional layers of agreements and legal rights that obtain when one uses subscription TV as opposed to free over the air TV. Another problem is how the court read the license under which the public performance takes place. I presume the argument is that the license for the public performance is to display the content without modification. The licensee (the business owner) is not required to display the content (hence the right to switch the TV on and off) and may switch among the available licensed content offerings (e.g., change channel). And, given its long use, it is clear that the licensee may opt to eliminate certain aspects of the display (e.g., mute the sound).

But the insertion of different content is, arguably, not covered under the public performance license.