MPAA Seeks Court Order Halting Zediva Streams
Escalating their battle with video site Zediva, the movie studios are asking a judge to prohibit the company from streaming movies online.
"Defendants are blatantly violating the Studios' exclusive right to publicly perform their copyrighted works," the Motion Picture Association of America said in a request for an injunction, filed Thursday in federal district court in New York. "Defendants' continuing unauthorized exploitation of the studios' works is likely to cause irreparable harm."
Zediva, which launched out of beta in March, charges users $2 to stream a movie for up to two weeks. Unlike the rental companies Netflix and Redbox, which impose a 28-day wait for new releases, Zediva offers users streams of films as soon as they hit the retail stores.
The company characterizes itself as a rental service, arguing that it buys DVDs, then only streams as many as it owns at any one time. "The only difference between watching a rented DVD on the DVD player in one's living room and watching a rented DVD using Zediva is that rather than connecting to the DVD player with a short cable, Zediva lets users connect to the DVD player over the Internet," Zediva argues in court papers.
Zediva also says that because it lawfully purchased the films, it can rent them under the "first sale" concept, which allows anyone who purchases CDs, books or movies to resell or rent them. The company says it is entitled to a ruling that the service it offers doesn't infringe the studios' copyright.
But the motion picture industry, which initially sued Zediva for copyright infringement in April, argues that the start-up isn't a rental company but a video-on-demand service that publicly performs movies. In addition, the MPAA argues, Zediva harms companies that have obtained licenses, like iTunes and Amazon, by siphoning away customers.
Copyright expert and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann has said that Zediva faces an uphill battle in court. He said that courts have ruled that brick-and-mortar stores that allowed consumers to rent video cassettes and watch them on the premises were infringing copyright by performing the movies.
Recent Online Media Daily Articles
-
Marketers Should Tailor Specific Pitches To Tablet, Smartphone May 22, 2:51 p.m.
Don’t lump tablets in with mobile. That’s the take-away of a new Forrester study looking at ... -
Good TV Content Trumps On, Whether Trad TV Or Streaming May 22, 2:42 p.m.
While consumers continue to perceive TV programming as superior in quality to that of online fare, ... -
Google Releases Self-Serve Display Benchmark Tool May 22, 2:02 p.m.
Understanding how a brand's online campaign competes with competitors requires trending benchmark data like engagement rates ... -
Twitter Brings Lead Generation To Tweets May 22, 1:14 p.m.
Twitter began testing a lead generation tool Wednesday in its tweet stream that resembles a cross ... -
DigitasLBi, Razorfish Tap Execs For Global Ops May 22, 11:26 a.m.
Publicis Groupe digital agencies DigitasLBi and Razorfish have installed new executives to run their respective international ... -
More Consumers Turn To Mobile To Research, Book Travel May 22, 8:53 a.m.
More than half of consumers used a mobile device to book travel in the last 90 ... -
Showrooming Overhyped, Mobile Key To Shopping Purchases May 22, 8:53 a.m.
Given consumers' mobile in-store shopping trends, some consider the showrooming hoopla overblown. The research process still ... -
Shopping App Swirl Adds In-Store Capability May 22, 8:53 a.m.
Swirl entered the mobile shopping fray last year with an iPhone app allowing users to learn ... -
Tablets Gain Popularity With Shoppers May 22, 8:53 a.m.
Internet-connected devices are exploding in the United States. There are 31.8 million Internet-accessible tablets, according to ... -
DataXu Opens Black Boxes, Launches Marketplace For Ad Algorithms May 22, 8:48 a.m.
In a push to demystify the black box world of programmatic trading, a major ad technology ...
Be the first to comment on "MPAA Seeks Court Order Halting Zediva Streams "
Leave a Comment