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Comment on TV monitoring service is fair use, judge rules

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Can't they work around this with licensing?

Basically Fox add a clause to their sales contract that says 'use of this type of thing is not allowed with our service'. That gets pushed down the line to those buying the service. TVEyes are buying a domestic service, contractually they can't get that service without committing a tort (breach of contract). Et voila?

Fox surely aren't obliged to provide the service to anyone they do not wish to supply it to. The inclusion of the Fox media on the service is proof, on the balance of probabilities, that the contract was broken ...

The judge is ruling that this sort of copyright infringement is not disallowed by law; but that doesn't surely mean it can't be made impossible by contract. There is no right to rip down TV broadcasts, surely?

It does seem now that a public facing service offering clips of up to 10 minutes of TV is allowed under this ruling. Presumably that's a new thing in USA? Also how is this different to offering digests of news websites - so I can sell NYT stories now as long as I sell lots of other peoples stories too, and so long as it's recent news, and so long as I don't let them see the whole NYT website. Clipping services bought the rights to the content.

I think it's a great ruling but I don't think the breadth of it will stand as I don't consider it to match with the general impetus of copyright law. Creating a video index using CC and/or speech-to-text (or human transcribers) doesn't seem particularly transformative to me, especially as the service Fox are using already is doing similar indexing. The only transformation is in the utility of the colocation of many channels - since when (other than for Google!) was "but if we sell everyone's content then it's easier" been a defence against copyright infringement.

They can't add a licensing clause if they broadcast it over the air. No one has to sign a license to receive and record broadcast TV.

If they were solely a cable or internet network, then possibly.

Ah, right, so they only way this would work would be to not off FTA broadcasts. Who FTA broadcasts Fox, themselves?

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