The Cablevision Case - 2 Years Later: A Conversation About Copyright, Content, and the Cloud

Thursday, November 4, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Harvard Law School, Pound Hall, Room 102
Free and open to the public.  Lunch will be served.

Presented by the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Harvard Law School's Journal of Law and Technology

The Second Circuit’s decision in  Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings, 536 F.3d 121 (2008) – known as the “Cablevision” case – stands as the leading federal court decision to address copyright issues in the context of cloud-based content storage systems.  The decision validated Cablevision’s proposed “Remote Storage” DVR system, which allowed cable subscribers to record TV programs to centralized digital video recorders (as opposed to individual DVR boxes in their homes).  Reversing a lower court decision that found in favor of plaintiff content owners and ruled Cablevision’s proposed RS-DVR to be infringing, the Court of Appeals held such a system “would not directly infringe plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works.”

Attorneys David Hosp and Ed Weiss offer unique perspectives on the Cablevision case.  As experts with extensive copyright experience, they can share their wealth of substantive knowledge on the complex issues addressed by the lower and appellate courts.  As advocates who were directly involved in the matter – David’s having represented Cablevision and Ed’s having served as in-house counsel for Time Warner at the time of the dispute – they can provide insight into the legal strategies, procedural twists and turns, and business considerations at the heart of the conflict.  Christopher Bavitz, Clinical Fellow at the Berkman Center and Assistant Director of the Cyberlaw Clinic, will moderate what promises to be an exciting and illuminating conversation about this landmark case.

About David Hosp

David Hosp is a partner in the Goodwin Procter’s Trial Department and a member of its Intellectual Property Group. His practice focuses on copyright, trademark and media matters.  Mr. Hosp has handled numerous high-profile lawsuits throughout the country. He represented The New York Times and The Boston Globe in first impression copyright and trademark litigation regarding fair use and news aggregation on the World Wide Web, and was counsel for the largest independent publisher of recorded books in a case that establish new law regarding the application of the Copyright Act’s first sale doctrine to audiobooks. 

In his spare time, Mr. Hosp is a writer whose bestselling novels Innocence, The Betrayed, and Dark Harbor have been published in seven languages.  His latest novel, Among Thieves, set against the backdrop of the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, was released in hardcover early in 2010.

About Ed Weiss

Ed Weiss was named General Counsel of New England Sports Ventures (NESV), the parent company of the Red Sox and New England Sports Network (NESN), in September 2009. Weiss currently has oversight on all legal matters for the NESV group of companies, including the Boston Red Sox, NESN, Fenway Sports Group (FSG) and, most recently, Liverpool Football Club, and has offices both at Fenway Park and at NESN’s headquarters in Watertown, MA.

Prior to joining the club, Weiss was Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Time Warner Inc. where he had been for the previous 13 years. In this role, Weiss was responsible for all litigation, regulatory and intellectual property issues across the company worldwide. He also handled any of Time Warner’s significant antitrust issues, including all transaction and merger clearances, served as a key advisor on business and intellectual property issues related to the digital content distribution and had oversight of all FCC legal issues. Weiss began his tenure at Time Warner with Time Warner Cable in 1996, overseeing all litigation and antitrust matters for the cable operator.

Links

• JOLT Summary of the talk