About those ivi TV legal challenges...

In my introductory post to ivi TV, I had noted that ivi TV's model of redistributing broadcast TV over the Internet was likely to face legal challenges. The company has received cease and desist orders from NBC-Universal, CBS, Disney, ABC, The CW Television Stations, Inc., Fox Television, Major League Baseball, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, WGBH, WNET.org, and Fisher Communications. In addition, The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) filed a legal challenge earlier this week. In the meantime, ivi itself has filed its own complaint in U.S. district court.

The Complaint states that ivi is legally operating under U.S. Copyright Law. According to section 16 of page 3 of the Complaint, "The Copyright Act expressly authorizes secondary transmissions of copyrighted works embodied in primary transmissions. For example, the Copyright Act expressly approves of the secondary transmission of an original television broadcast where the secondary transmission is subject to a statutory license. Under Section 111 of the Copyright Act, statutory licensing fees are paid periodically to the Register of Copyrights in accordance with an established scale and schedule. Section 111 further provides that the secondary transmission of an over-the-air primary transmission is not an infringement of copyrights in the works contained in the primary transmission."

Fierce Online Video has its take on the suit-countersuit action.