AUSSIE TiVo-TYPE COPYRIGHT CASE

Variety and Lateline report that Australian Channel 9 was in court yesterday with a copyright action against fellow Aussie company Ice TV. Ice TV deploys a Personal Interactive Media Player (PIMP for short – yes, really) which, for a fee of AUS$3 a week, allows subscribers to designate programmes that they wish to record electronically. The recordings skip the adverts in the original broadcasts. Channel 9 claims that in so doing, Ice TV infringes Channel 9’s copyright in its broadcast schedules by using the information therein and by reproducing the schedules in electronic form.

The IPKat has some sympathy with Channel 9 here. A programme that means that viewers won’t see the adverts could reduce Channel 9’s revenue stream, and ultimately deprive those viewers of the programmes that they are using PIMP to record. He further notes that while Channel 9 might be preventing the development of a secondary market in such technology, unlike the ECJ’s Magill case, there is a good reason inherent in the nature of broadcasting for keeping this information back.