Copyright Law Might Not Apply in Looming TV App Fights
SAN FRANCISCO -- With a boom in the number of a new class of apps for tablets, smartphones and smart TVs using automatic content recognition (ACR) software to identify what a device’s user is watching on TV (CD April 16 p7), and potentially selling ads based on that, a battle between content owners and app developers may be looming. That’s what executives told the TV of Tomorrow conference this week. The technology could let any app developer sell ads against or otherwise monetize TV programming.
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Copyright law and carriage agreements will limit to an extent what pay-TV distributors can do, at least in terms of manipulating a network’s signal, said Channing Dawson, a senior adviser to Scripps Networks Interactive. For instance, they can put closed captions and weather alerts onto programming, but other content isn’t allowed, he said. “If someone starts doing pop-up videos over [the] Food Network, somebody is not going to be happy,” he said. “And that standard has been set in 50 years of carriage agreements that we'll fall back on.”
ACR technology will allow third parties to access information about what is on a viewer’s TV screen, known as metadata, leaving programmers and distributors with less control in that environment, said Ashwin Navin, CEO of Flingo. “The traditional ’shtick’ of saying ‘we own and control the content’ doesn’t work,” he said. “We have to think of what are the carrots that bring the devices into the value [media] chain … rather than something that sits outside the value chain."
Copyright law probably won’t help content owners limit the ability of third parties to access ACR technology, said CEO Craig Palmer of Wikia. The company collects large amounts of user-generated metadata related to a variety of topics, including TV. The audio and video fingerprinting used by most ACR technologies hasn’t been considered a “derivative work” under copyright law, he said. “I don’t think copyright law will win in this world."
So far the stakes are small, because these new apps have yet to catch on with consumers. “But it’s definitely going to be [the case] that as the dollar volume increases, so will the cease-and-desist letters,” said Zane Vella, CEO of Watchwith. Content owners have a leg-up on third parties because they have official product information about TV shows, he said. Often, just relying on keywords associated with a show can lead to confusing and bad experiences on synchronized companion apps, he said. For example, an app Watchwith built with eBay was delivering links to auctions for leather fringe jackets when viewers were watching the science-fiction show Fringe, he said.
App developers are also being careful not to alarm the content owners too much, said Navin. “There are things that technology can enable you to do and there are things that are just good business practices,” he said. “Just because there’s a technology that allows you to do something, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”