Fox Files for Injunction To Stop Dish’s Hopper Transfers Service
Fox asked the U.S. District Court, Los Angeles, to grant it an injunction against Dish Network, and stop the DBS company from allowing its subscribers to retransmit Fox’s live broadcast signal over the Internet and authorizing subscribers to make copies of Fox programs for use outside the home through its Hopper Transfers feature. Dish introduced Hopper Transfers in January, a system which allows users to move TV recordings from a DVR to an iPad and view them without an Internet connection (CD Jan 8 p5). Both of the services “breach Dish’s license agreement with Fox, and Dish’s Internet retransmission service also independently infringes Fox’s copyrights,” Fox said in a motion.
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Fox said Dish is violating the express terms of its license agreement with Fox. The Hopper Transfers feature violates this agreement by authorizing subscribers to copy the programs for a use that is not a private home use, Fox said. Hopper Transfers “will irreparably harm Fox’s relationships with other cable, satellite and telecommunications providers that distribute Fox’s signal, since these companies will now have to compete with Dish.” CBS, NBCUniversal and Fox separately filed similar suits last year against Dish’s PrimeTime Anytime service (CD Aug 28 p5).
Dish is breaching the “no-Internet” clause and the “no-copying” clause, Fox said. A Dish satellite TV subscription doesn’t buy anyone the right “to receive Fox’s live broadcast signal over the Internet or to make copies of Fox programs to watch ‘on the go,’ because Dish does not have the right to offer these services to its subscribers in the first place,” it said. Dish has suggested that consumers paying for its subscriptions own the programs they receive, “and therefore have the right to copy them onto mobile devices to watch outside the home,” Fox said: “This is wrong. … The license agreement between Fox and Dish makes clear that Dish does not have any ownership right in the programming.”
Fox also alleged that Dish is infringing the public performance right. When a broadcast signal is retransmitted over the Internet and allows programs in that signal to be seen by the public, this is a public performance, Fox said. If a service streams live broadcast programming over the Internet into homes or to mobile devices without permission from the company owning the copyrights, “the service is infringing the copyright owner’s exclusive right” to perform its works publicly.
"With its latest motion, FOX continues its war against how Americans watch TV,” Dish said in a statement. “Dish has long argued consumers have the right to privately watch shows anywhere, anytime, and it looks forward to continuing its fight on behalf of customer choice and control."
Fox said it opposes claims that Internet retransmissions are private and that Dish subscribers are doing the transmitting. “It is well-suited in this circuit that when the issue is the public performance right, it does not matter who presses the button.” A hearing on Fox’s latest motion is to be March 22.