You've Gotta Friend

Lawsuits make for some strange bedfellows. USTelecom (whose members include AT&T and Verizon), NetCoalition (Yahoo and Google are on the rolls) and 9 other groups are backing Cablevision’s efforts to launch a network DVR service. The groups filed a brief late Fri with the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals asking a lower court to reverse its March decision that a remote storage recording service would make it liable for copyright infringement. "Development of new technologies, such as remote data storage and remote computing applications would be chilled," if the ruling stands, the brief said. 28 law profs, including well-known scholar Lawrence Lessig, filed a separate brief supporting the MSO. They argue that RAM reproductions, such as those created by CVC’s remote storage DVR, aren’t sufficiently fixed to be deemed copies as they are destroyed almost immediately after they are created. In a separate brief, Columbia copyright prof Timothy Wu said the ruling should be reversed because it creates "regulatory asymmetry—an unjustifiable difference in the legal status of competing solutions for providing DVR services."