Law Professor Mark Lemley: Hollywood Is Simply Wrong About FCC's Set Top Box Plan

from the not-a-copyright-issue dept

The MPAA’s argument that studios have the right to control the device on which you view your content reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law. Copyright gives its owner the right to control the making of copies and public performances of a work. But it does not give them control over any use of a work. That’s no accident. Once the copyright owner has been paid once for a particular copy, its control over that copy ends. That’s why I can lend a book to friends, or sell my used record collection outright.



True, there are some things I can ‘t do even with a copy of a movie or song I own. I can’t upload it on a file-sharing site, for instance, and I can’t play it on the radio. But that’s because doing those things either makes a new copy or makes a new, public performance of the work.



The studios have already been paid for the movies shown on a cable or satellite service. Indeed, they’ve been paid specifically for the right to publicly perform the work by transmitting it to my (and everyone else’s) home.



And here, copyright law says something very important to copyright owners: that’s all you get. Once the cable companies have paid the MPAA for the right to deliver their movie into my home, the MPAA loses control over how I choose to watch their movie in the privacy of my own home. I can record it on a DVR and watch it whenever I want. I can watch it on a big-screen TV or a small one, with the sound on or off, in one sitting or many, while fast-forwarding through parts I don’t like or rewinding to rewatch parts I do. I can watch it again and again. Most important, I can watch it on any device I want, including my computer, my iPad, or my phone.

That isn’t a “compulsory license” of copyrights; it’s a limit on the scope of those rights. That limit exists even if copyright owners try to declare that it doesn’t. This is the law. It has always been the law. Every effort by copyright owners to control how I watch a show in my own home has ended in failure.

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We've been discussing for a while now about how the MPAA, with the help of the Copyright Office, has been propping up thethat the FCC's plan to create more competition in the cable set top box space involves violating the copyrights of studios. It's a complete myth. The cable industry has been leading the charge here, mainly because it makes billions of dollars by charging people to "rent" its crappy boxes. But it found a strong ally in copyright maximalists who have repeatedly misrepresented the proposal. As we noted, the Copyright Office put out a report that flat out lied about what the FCC's proposal entailedabout how copyright itself works (arguing that contracts between two third parties could somehow eliminate the fair use rights of private citizens). And, incredibly, the basic argument being put forth by copyright maximalists, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that VCRs and DVRs are illegal too That's not how copyright law actually works -- but the message has caught on, and the FCC has already been forced to weaken its proposal -- and the industry is still bitching about it Thankfully, we're finally starting to see some copyright experts speak up about just how wrong Hollywood and the Copyright Office are on this. Mark Lemley, by far the most cited intellectual property professor (who is also a practicing lawyer), has written up a piece for the Hill that rips to shreds the idea that the FCC's plan somehow would implicate Hollywood's copyrights . As he notes, they're totally overstating what copyright allows:And, while the MPAA and its supporters keep calling the FCC proposal a "compulsory license," Lemley points out that it's not a compulsory license that lets you record a TV program to your VCR or DVR, and neither is this:Unfortunately, this blatantly false attack by Hollywood and the Copyright Office on the FCC's plan has been effective. It seems unlikely that the plan will go through, and what's troubling about it is that it's all based on flat-out falsehoods by Hollywood, the Copyright Office and its supporters.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, copyright office, fcc, mark lemley, set top box, set top boxes

Companies: mpaa