US District Court Judge Denny Chin found that Cablevision "would engage in public performance of plaintiffs' copyrighted works in operating its proposed RS-DVR service, thereby infringing plaintiffs' exclusive rights under the Copyright Act." Judge Chin issued a permanent injunction against the deployment of the RS-DVR.

Cablevision first floated the idea of a remote-storage DVR about a year ago, resurrecting AOL/TimeWarner's ill-fated Mystro service. The RS-DVR would store programming on servers at the cable company rather on set-top boxes. For less than the cable company's $9.99 per month DVR rental fee, users would be given 80GB of space on a Cablevision server on which they could remotely record shows to be watched at their convenience.

It sounds like a great solution: Cablevision gets to offer a DVR without the expense of deploying set-top boxes to its subscribers. Consumers, in turn, would get 80GB of space to record their favorite shows for less than they would have to pay for an in-home box.

The television networks didn't see it the same way, accusing Cablevision of rebroadcasting their content. "Cablevision is actually copying, storing and retransmitting it," said an MPAA spokesperson when the lawsuit was filed. "A commercial entity can't establish a for-profit, on-demand service without authorization from copyright owners whose content is used on that service."...More

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