Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2014/02/18/aereo-in-international-perspective-individualized-access-and-u-s-treaty-obligations/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 18:15:35+00:00

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In general, the Cablevision2/Aereo scheme for creating copyright-free communications to the public, by assigning individual copies of broadcast or cable-transmitted content to requesting subscribers and then retransmitting the content to the subscriber (and only to that subscriber) from “her” copy, has fared less well abroad. Courts in Europe,3 Australia,4 and Japan5 have all overturned various elements of the Cablevision/Aereo edifice, either by rejecting the designation of the user as the sole “maker” of the source copy of the transmission, or by concluding that the purportedly “personalized” nature of the transmission is irrelevant.6 Where the Second Circuit subscribed to defendants’ characterizations of their services as mere extensions of equipment users employed at home to time-shift or enhance signal reception – virtual DVRs and virtual rabbit ears – the foreign authorities instead largely perceived that the services were offering video on demand or retransmissions in violation of the copyright owners’ exclusive rights.
The legal analysis that followed from this understanding of the defendants’ businesses, moreover, is consistent with the international obligation to implement the “making available” right – a right that the United States, in ratifying the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaties, asserted was already fully covered by the distribution and public performance rights, and therefore required no legislative intervention to ensure conformity of U.S. copyright law with its international obligations. The Second Circuit’s caselaw belies that assertion. Accordingly, and consistently with principles of statutory interpretation in light of treaty norms, the Supreme Court should interpret the scope of the statutory exclusive rights to effect, rather than to frustrate, the international treaty obligations to which the United States purports to adhere.
32 In that connection, it follows from the case-law of the Court that the term “public” in Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29 refers to an indeterminate number of potential recipients and implies, moreover, a fairly large number of persons . . . .
33 As regards that last criterion specifically, the cumulative effect of making the works available to potential recipients should be taken into account. In that connection, it is in particular relevant to ascertain the number of persons who have access to the same work at the same time and successively. . . .
34 In that context, it is irrelevant whether the potential recipients access the communicated works through a one-to-one connection. That technique does not prevent a large number of persons having access to the same work at the same time. . . .
By contrast, as specified in the Agreed Statement to WCT Art. 8, and repeated in Recital 27 of the Information Society Directive, and cited in TV Catchup (para. 3), “the mere provision of physical facilities for enabling or making a communication does not in itself amount to communication.” Thus, under international treaty norms,17 a service, such as Dropbox, which provides the servers for storing and/or which provides access to user-stored content, but does not also supply the content that it will allocate to a user’s personal storage space, or thence transmit back to her on demand, would merely be providing facilities, rather than making the content available to the public.18 Put another way, when the same service stores and plays back to the user content that the service initially offered to provide to the user, that service is doing more than merely providing communications facilities. But when the user creates the content or acquires it from a source other than the service’s own offerings, and then stores that content on the service’s facilities, then the service’s activities correspond to the “non communications” envisioned in the Agreed Statement.
As the disarray in the lower courts attests,23 the statutory formulation of the public performance right does not clearly and unambiguously foreclose coverage of making works available through communicating content for individualized storage and retransmission of broadcast or cable programming. Even the District of Massachusetts, in following the Second Circuit in Aereo, admitted that “the Transmit Clause is not a model of clarity.”24 An interpretation consistent with international standards therefore is “possible.” In fact, as the following analysis shows, such an interpretation is far more natural than the strained interpretation offered by the Second Circuit. Accordingly, Charming Betsy counsels coextensive interpretation of domestic and international norms.
Arguably, two differences in text between the WCT and the U.S. Copyright Act preclude interpreting the scope of the U.S. public performance right consistently with the scope of the WCT “making available” right. First, the WCT addresses access to “works,” rather than to “a performance or display of [a] work.” The United States , however, purports to implement the making available of “works” through a combination of the distribution and the public performance rights, an approach urged by the United States during the drafting of the WCT, and adopted by the diplomatic conference.25 Whether through separate rights, or a single “making available” right, WCT member states are to cover the offering to the public of streams and of downloads of works.26 Thus, “to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process” should mean to communicate the work in a way that members of the public can immediately listen to or view its performance,27 whether or not they are separated in space or time. The Second Circuit deviated from the international norm by incorrectly reading “whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place, or in separate places and at the same time or at different times” as a limitation on the scope of the communication, rather than as confirmation of the coverage of individualized transmissions. The court compounded the error by rewriting “it” to mean a particular transmission from a particular copy of a performance, rather than adhering to the grammatical referent, the statutory phrase performance of the work – that is, a communication that permits the members of the public to view or listen to the work as it is being communicated to them. Only the latter reading of “it” corresponds to the scope of the right in both the U.S. statute and the WCT. It should make no difference whether the performances that the service offers to the public emanate from a single source copy or from multiple copies created to enable members of the public to view or listen to the work.
How would an internationally harmonious reading of the public performance right apply to Cablevision and Aereo? Given the WCT’s Agreed Statement excluding services that merely provide communications facilities, the making available right trains on the public offer of content, rather than solely on the provision of storage or delivery services. Under this standard, both Aereo’s and Cablevision’s activities would infringe, for both are not only proposing but are in fact providing the programming to the public as near-live retransmissions of broadcast content (Aereo)30 or as deferred-viewing video on demand (Cablevision). The particular modalities of how the programming is actually delivered (whether by individualized transmissions from individualized copies, or by transmissions from a centralized copy) are ultimately irrelevant: What counts, as the CJEU recognized in TV Catchup, is that the “potential recipients” of the performances of the work as offered by the service provider are a large number of members of the public.
* This column is excerpted and adapted from a larger study with Professor Rebecca Giblin, tentatively titled, Vestigial Copyright Categories and Copyright-Avoiding Business Models (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Making Available Right). The views expressed here do not necessarily in all respects represent those of my co-author.
1. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc., 712 F.3d 676 (2d Cir. 2013).
2. Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings, 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008).
3. Wizzgo v. Metropole Television et autres, Paris Court of Appeals, decision of 14 December 2011, http://www.legalis.net/spip.php?page=jurisprudence-decision&id_article=3297 (automated “remote video recorder” service qualifies neither for transient copying nor for private copying exceptions because service, not the end-user, is the maker of the user’s individual copy); Shift.tv, BGH (German Supreme Court), I ZT 152/11, 11 April 2013 (remote DVR service’s transmission of original signal to subscribers’ individual storage boxes violates broadcasters’ retransmission right).
4. National Rugby League Investments Pty Ltd. v. Singtel Optus Pty Ltd.  FCAFC 59 (service “makes” the personalized storage copy).
5. ManekiTV (Supreme Court 2011) (personalized transmissions by service held public transmissions); Rokuraku II (Supreme Court 2011) (copies for individualized storage at subscriber request held to be “made” by the service). Both decisions are discussed in Takashi B. Yamamoto, “ Legal Liability for Indirect Infringement of Copyright in Japan,” http://www.itlaw.jp/yearbook35.pdf.
6. The outlier is Record TV Pte Ltd. v. MediaCorp TV Singapore Pte Ltd.  1 SLR 830, where the appellate court appears to have followed each step of the Cablevision reasoning.
7. See Decreto-Legge of 31 December 2007, n. 248. Art. 5(2-ter), converted 28 February 2008 to law n. 31 of 31 December 2007.
8. Letter n. 29900 DG Markt/D1/DB/D (2009) (translaton mine).
9. Letter n. 29900, supra at 4-5.
10. The letter also warned that Italy’s failure to modify the law could lead the Commission to initiate an action against Italy for non-compliance with its obligations under the EU Treaty, id. p. 5.
11. Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale, Lazio Roma, sez. II, 02.3.2012, n. 2157, pp. 41-44.
12. Case C-607/11, TVCatchup Ltd., 7 March 2013.
14. Case C‑466/12, Svensson, 23 February 2014, para. 19.
16. See “WIPO Guide to the Copyright and Related Rights Treaties Administered by WIPO” (2003) at CT-86 (“It had to be accepted and clarified that this concept [making available] extends not only to the acts that are carried out by the ‘communications’ themselves (that is, to the acts as a result of which a work or object of related rights is, in fact, made available to the public and the members of the public do not have to do more than, for example, switch on equipment necessary for its reception), but also to the acts which only consist of making the work accessible to the public, and in the case of which the members of the public still have to cause the system to make it actually available to them.”).
“Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties” (1969), Art. 31(1): “A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose.” Art. 31(2) goes on to specify: “The context for the purpose of the interpretation of a treaty shall comprise, in addition to the text, including its preamble and annexes: (a) any agreement relating to the treaty which was made between all the parties in connection with the conclusion of the treaty….” While the United States has not ratified the Vienna Convention, it applies that treaty’s norms as a matter of international customary law. See “Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States” 145 (1986).
18. The Agreed Statement should not, however, be read to immunize retransmission services; secondary transmissions of broadcast works come within the scope of Berne Convention Art. 11bis (which also permits member states to impose compulsory licenses under certain conditions), and WCT Art. 8 is “without prejudice” to Art. 11bis.
19. U.S. Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force, Copyright Policy , Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy (July 2013), p. 14 (“When the United States implemented the WIPO Internet Treaties in the DMCA, it did not include an explicit ‘making available’ right, as both Congress and the Administration concluded that the relevant acts were encompassed within the existing scope of exclusive rights.”), citing, inter alia, H.R. Rep . No . 105-551, pt. 1, at 9 (1998) (“The treaties do not require any change in the substance of copyright rights or exceptions in U.S. law. ”). For a discussion of the legislative history underlying the absence of an amendment specifically implementing the making available right, see generally David O. Carson, “Making the ‘ Making Available’ Right Available,” the 22d Manges Lecture, 33 Colum. J. L. & the Arts 135, 147-48 (2010).
20. See id. at 148-50.
21. See Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. 64 (1804).
23. See Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. Barry Driller Content Systems, PLC, 915 F. Supp. 2d 1138 (C.D. Calif. 2012); Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. Filmon X LLC, 2013 WL 4763414, 8 (D.D.C. 2013).
24. Hearst Stations, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc., 2013 WL 5604284 (D. Mass. 2013).
25. The Records of the 1996 diplomatic conference indicate that member states may comply with the making available right either through local communication rights, or through a combination of rights, including the right to distribute copies, as the United States urged during the drafting period. (1996 Records at 675, para. 301 ).
26. 1996 Records at 204.
27. The Second Circuit has interpreted “to perform” as meaning “to perform in any perceptible manner during the transfer.” See U.S. v. ASCAP, 627 F.3d 64, 73 (2d Cir. 2010).
28. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 101 (definition of “to perform a work ‘publicly’”).
29. See H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, 94 th Cong., 2d Sess. at 64-65 (1976). See also H.R. Rep. No. 90-83, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. at 29 (1967): “[A] performance made available by transmission to the public at large is ‘public’ . . . where the transmission is capable of reaching different recipients at different times, as in the case of sounds or images stored in an information system and capable of being performed or displayed at the initiative of individual members of the public ” (emphasis added).
30. Aereo’s service exceeds those of mere storage or conduit contemplated by the Agreed Statement, but even if its activities were viewed as confined to providing “communications facilities,” its transcoding of an over-the-air broadcast signal into an Internet Protocol format and retransmission of the signals (even if the signals’ capture is attributed to the subscribers’ “personal” antennas ) come within the scope of another international norm, Berne Conv. Art. 11bis(1)(ii), from which WCT does not derogate. See supra, note 18.

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