Opinion ID: 2599
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Transmission of RS-DVR Playback

Text: Plaintiffs' final theory is that Cablevision will violate the Copyright Act by engaging in unauthorized public performances of their works through the playback of the RS-DVR copies. The Act grants a copyright owner the exclusive right, in the case of ... motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly. 17 U.S.C. § 106(4). Section 101, the definitional section of the Act, explains that [t]o perform or display a work publicly means (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, 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. Id. § 101. The parties agree that this case does not implicate clause (1). Accordingly, we ask whether these facts satisfy the second, transmit clause of the public performance definition: Does Cablevision transmit... a performance ... of the work ... to the public? Id. No one disputes that the RS-DVR playback results in the transmission of a performance of a workthe transmission from the Arroyo Server to the customer's television set. Cablevision contends that (1) the RS-DVR customer, rather than Cablevision, does the transmitting and thus the performing and (2) the transmission is not to the public under the transmit clause. As to Cablevision's first argument, we note that our conclusion in Part II that the customer, not Cablevision, does the copying does not dictate a parallel conclusion that the customer, and not Cablevision, performs the copyrighted work. The definitions that delineate the contours of the reproduction and public performance rights vary in significant ways. For example, the statute defines the verb perform and the noun copies, but not the verbs reproduce or copy. Id. We need not address Cablevision's first argument further because, even if we assume that Cablevision makes the transmission when an RS-DVR playback occurs, we find that the RS-DVR playback, as described here, does not involve the transmission of a performance to the public. The statute itself does not expressly define the term performance or the phrase to the public. It does explain that a transmission may be to the public ... whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance ... receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times. Id. This plain language instructs us that, in determining whether a transmission is to the public, it is of no moment that the potential recipients of the transmission are in different places, or that they may receive the transmission at different times. The implication from this same language, however, is that it is relevant, in determining whether a transmission is made to the public, to discern who is capable of receiving the performance being transmitted. The fact that the statute says capable of receiving the performance, instead of capable of receiving the transmission, underscores the fact that a transmission of a performance is itself a performance. Cf. Buck v. Jewell-La Salle Realty Co., 283 U.S. 191, 197-98, 51 S.Ct. 410, 75 L.Ed. 971 (1931). The legislative history of the transmit clause supports this interpretation. The House Report on the 1976 Copyright Act states that [u]nder the bill, as under the present law, a performance made available by transmission to the public at large is public even though the recipients are not gathered in a single place, and even if there is no proof that any of the potential recipients was operating his receiving apparatus at the time of the transmission. The same principles apply whenever the potential recipients of the transmission represent a limited segment of the public, such as the occupants of hotel rooms or the subscribers of a cable television service. H.R.Rep. No. 94-1476, at 64-65 (1976), reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5659, 5678 (emphases added). Plaintiffs also reference a 1967 House Report, issued nearly a decade before the Act we are interpreting, stating that the same principles apply 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. H.R.Rep. No. 90-83, at 29 (1967) (emphases added). We question how much deference this report deserves. But we need not belabor the point here, as the 1967 report is consistent with both legislative history contemporaneous with the Act's passage and our own interpretation of the statute's plain meaning. From the foregoing, it is evident that the transmit clause directs us to examine who precisely is capable of receiving a particular transmission of a performance. Cablevision argues that, because each RS-DVR transmission is made using a single unique copy of a work, made by an individual subscriber, one that can be decoded exclusively by that subscriber's cable box, only one subscriber is capable of receiving any given RS-DVR transmission. This argument accords with the language of the transmit clause, which, as described above, directs us to consider the potential audience of a given transmission. We are unpersuaded by the district court's reasoning and the plaintiffs' arguments that we should consider a larger potential audience in determining whether a transmission is to the public. The district court, in deciding whether the RS-DVR playback of a program to a particular customer is to the public, apparently considered all of Cablevision's customers who subscribe to the channel airing that program and all of Cablevision's RS-DVR subscribers who request a copy of that program. Thus, it concluded that the RS-DVR playbacks constituted public performances because Cablevision would transmit the same program to members of the public, who may receive the performance at different times, depending on whether they view the program in real time or at a later time as an RS-DVR playback. Cablevision I, 478 F.Supp.2d at 623 (emphasis added). In essence, the district court suggested that, in considering whether a transmission is to the public, we consider not the potential audience of a particular transmission, but the potential audience of the underlying work (i.e., the program) whose content is being transmitted. We cannot reconcile the district court's approach with the language of the transmit clause. That clause speaks of people capable of receiving a particular transmission or performance, and not of the potential audience of a particular work. Indeed, such an approach would render the to the public language surplusage. Doubtless the potential audience for every copyrighted audiovisual work is the general public. As a result, any transmission of the content of a copyrighted work would constitute a public performance under the district court's interpretation. But the transmit clause obviously contemplates the existence of non-public transmissions; if it did not, Congress would have stopped drafting that clause after performance. On appeal, plaintiffs offer a slight variation of this interpretation. They argue that both in its real-time cablecast and via the RS-DVR playback, Cablevision is in fact transmitting the same performance of a given work: the performance of the work that occurs when the programming service supplying Cablevision's content transmits that content to Cablevision and the service's other licensees. See Br. of Pls.-Appellees Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. et al. at 27 (Fox Br.) (The critical factor ... is that the same performance is transmitted to different subscribers at different times .... more specifically, the performance of that program by HBO or another programming service.  (third emphasis added)). Thus, according to plaintiffs, when Congress says that to perform a work publicly means to transmit ... a performance ... to the public, they really meant transmit... the `original performance' ... to the public. The implication of this theory is that to determine whether a given transmission of a performance is to the public, we would consider not only the potential audience of that transmission, but also the potential audience of any transmission of the same underlying original performance. Like the district court's interpretation, this view obviates any possibility of a purely private transmission. Furthermore, it makes Cablevision's liability depend, in part, on the actions of legal strangers. Assume that HBO transmits a copyrighted work to both Cablevision and Comcast. Cablevision merely retransmits the work from one Cablevision facility to another, while Comcast retransmits the program to its subscribers. Under plaintiffs' interpretation, Cablevision would still be transmitting the performance to the public, solely because Comcast has transmitted the same underlying performance to the public. Similarly, a hapless customer who records a program in his den and later transmits the recording to a television in his bedroom would be liable for publicly performing the work simply because some other party had once transmitted the same underlying performance to the public. We do not believe Congress intended such odd results. Although the transmit clause is not a model of clarity, we believe that when Congress speaks of transmitting a performance to the public, it refers to the performance created by the act of transmission. Thus, HBO transmits its own performance of a work when it transmits to Cablevision, and Cablevision transmits its own performance of the same work when it retransmits the feed from HBO. Furthermore, we believe it would be inconsistent with our own transmit clause jurisprudence to consider the potential audience of an upstream transmission by a third party when determining whether a defendant's own subsequent transmission of a performance is to the public. In National Football League v. PrimeTime 24 Joint Venture (NFL), 211 F.3d 10 (2000), we examined the transmit clause in the context of satellite television provider PrimeTime, which captured protected content in the United States from the NFL, transmitted it from the United States to a satellite (the uplink), and then transmitted it from the satellite to subscribers in both the United States and Canada (the downlink). PrimeTime had a license to transmit to its U.S. customers, but not its Canadian customers. It argued that although the downlink transmission to its Canadian subscribers was a public performance, it could not be held liable for that act because it occurred entirely outside of the United States and therefore was not subject to the strictures of the Copyright Act. It also argued that the uplink transmission was not a public performance because it was a transmission to a single satellite. See id. at 12. The NFL court did not question the first assumption, but it flatly rejected the second on a specific and germane ground: We believe the most logical interpretation of the Copyright Act is to hold that a public performance or display includes each step in the process by which a protected work wends its way to its audience. Under that analysis, it is clear that PrimeTime's uplink transmission of signals captured in the United States is a step in the process by which NFL's protected work wends its way to a public audience. Id. at 13 (emphasis added) (internal quotation and citation omitted). Thus, while the uplink transmission that took place in the United States was not, in itself, to the public, the NFL court deemed it so because it ultimately resulted in an undisputed public performance. Notably, the NFL court did not base its decision on the fact that an upstream transmission by another party (the NFL) might have been to the public. Nor did the court base its decision on the fact that Primetime simultaneously transmitted a performance of the work to the public in the United States. Because NFL directs us to look downstream, rather than upstream or laterally, to determine whether any link in a chain of transmissions made by a party constitutes a public performance, we reject plaintiffs' contention that we examine the potential recipients of the content provider's initial transmission to determine who is capable of receiving the RS-DVR playback transmission. Plaintiffs also rely on NFL for the proposition that Cablevision publicly performs a work when it splits its programming stream and transmits the second stream to the RS-DVR system. Because NFL only supports that conclusion if we determine that the final transmission in the chain (i.e., the RS-DVR playback transmission) is to the public, plaintiffs' reliance on NFL is misplaced. NFL dealt with a chain of transmissions whose final link was undisputedly a public performance. It therefore does not guide our current inquiry. In sum, none of the arguments advanced by plaintiffs or the district court alters our conclusion that, under the transmit clause, we must examine the potential audience of a given transmission by an alleged infringer to determine whether that transmission is to the public. And because the RS-DVR system, as designed, only makes transmissions to one subscriber using a copy made by that subscriber, we believe that the universe of people capable of receiving an RS-DVR transmission is the single subscriber whose self-made copy is used to create that transmission. Plaintiffs contend that it is wholly irrelevant, in determining the existence of a public performance, whether `unique' copies of the same work are used to make the transmissions. Fox Br. at 27. But plaintiffs cite no authority for this contention. And our analysis of the transmit clause suggests that, in general, any factor that limits the potential audience of a transmission is relevant. Furthermore, no transmission of an audiovisual work can be made, we assume, without using a copy of that work: to transmit a performance of a movie, for example, the transmitter generally must obtain a copy of that movie. As a result, in the context of movies, television programs, and other audiovisual works, the right of reproduction can reinforce and protect the right of public performance. If the owner of a copyright believes he is injured by a particular transmission of a performance of his work, he may be able to seek redress not only for the infringing transmission, but also for the underlying copying that facilitated the transmission. Given this interplay between the various rights in this context, it seems quite consistent with the Act to treat a transmission made using Copy A as distinct from one made using Copy B, just as we would treat a transmission made by Cablevision as distinct from an otherwise identical transmission made by Comcast. Both factorsthe identity of the transmitter and the source material of the transmissionlimit the potential audience of a transmission in this case and are therefore germane in determining whether that transmission is made to the public. Indeed, we believe that Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Redd Horne, Inc., 749 F.2d 154 (3d Cir.1984), relied on by both plaintiffs and the district court, supports our decision to accord significance to the existence and use of distinct copies in our transmit clause analysis. In that case, defendant operated a video rental store, Maxwell's, which also housed a number of small private booths containing seats and a television. Patrons would select a film, enter the booth, and close the door. An employee would then load a copy of the requested movie into a bank of VCRs at the front of the store and push play, thereby transmitting the content of the tape to the television in the viewing booth. See id. at 156-57. The Third Circuit found that defendants' conduct constituted a public performance under both clauses of the statutory definition. In concluding that Maxwell's violated the transmit clause, that court explicitly relied on the fact that defendants showed the same copy of a work seriatim to its clientele, and it quoted a treatise emphasizing the same fact: Professor Nimmer's examination of this definition is particularly pertinent:  if the same copy ... of a given work is repeatedly played ( i.e., `performed') by different members of the public, albeit at different times, this constitutes a `public' performance. 2 M. Nimmer, § 8.14[C][3], at 8-142 (emphasis in original).... Although Maxwell's has only one copy of each film, it shows each copy repeatedly to different members of the public. This constitutes a public performance. Id. at 159 (first omission in original). Unfortunately, neither the Redd Horne court nor Prof. Nimmer explicitly explains why the use of a distinct copy affects the transmit clause inquiry. But our independent analysis confirms the soundness of their intuition: the use of a unique copy may limit the potential audience of a transmission and is therefore relevant to whether that transmission is made to the public. Plaintiffs' unsupported arguments to the contrary are unavailing. Given that each RS-DVR transmission is made to a given subscriber using a copy made by that subscriber, we conclude that such a transmission is not to the public, without analyzing the contours of that phrase in great detail. No authority cited by the parties or the district court persuades us to the contrary. In addition to Redd Horne, the district court also cited and analyzed On Command Video Corp. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, 777 F.Supp. 787 (N.D.Cal. 1991), in its transmit clause analysis. In that case, defendant On Command developed and sold a system for the electronic delivery of movie video tapes, which it sold to hotels. Id. at 788. The hub of the system was a bank of video cassette players, each containing a copy of a particular movie. From his room, a hotel guest could select a movie via remote control from a list on his television. The corresponding cassette player would start, and its output would be transmitted to that guest's room. During this playback, the movie selected was unavailable to other guests. See id. The court concluded that the transmissions made by this system were made to the public because the relationship between the transmitter of the performance, On Command, and the audience, hotel guests, is a commercial, `public' one regardless of where the viewing takes place. Id. at 790. Thus, according to the On Command court, any commercial transmission is a transmission to the public. We find this interpretation untenable, as it completely rewrites the language of the statutory definition. If Congress had wished to make all commercial transmissions public performances, the transmit clause would read: to perform a work publicly means ... to transmit a performance for commercial purposes. In addition, this interpretation overlooks, as Congress did not, the possibility that even non-commercial transmissions to the public may diminish the value of a copyright. Finally, like Redd Horne, On Command is factually distinguishable, as successive transmissions to different viewers in that case could be made using a single copy of a given work. Thus, at the moment of transmission, any of the hotel's guests was capable of receiving a transmission made using a single copy of a given movie. As a result, the district court in this case erred in relying on On Command. Plaintiffs also rely on Ford Motor Co. v. Summit Motor Products, Inc., 930 F.2d 277 (3d Cir.1991), in which the Third Circuit interpreted § 106(3) of the Copyright Act, which gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to distribute copies ... of the copyrighted work to the public,  17 U.S.C. § 106(3) (emphasis added). The court concluded that even one person can be the public for the purposes of section 106(3).  Ford, 930 F.2d at 299 (emphasis added). Commentators have criticized the Ford court for divesting the phrase to the public of all meaning whatsoever, 2 Nimmer & Nimmer, supra, § 8.11[A], at 8-149, and the decision does appear to have that result. Whether this result was justified in the context of the distribution right is not for us to decide in this case. We merely note that we find no compelling reason, in the context of the transmit clause and the public performance right, to interpret the phrase to the public out of existence. In sum, we find that the transmit clause directs us to identify the potential audience of a given transmission, i.e., the persons capable of receiving it, to determine whether that transmission is made to the public. Because each RS-DVR playback transmission is made to a single subscriber using a single unique copy produced by that subscriber, we conclude that such transmissions are not performances to the public, and therefore do not infringe any exclusive right of public performance. We base this decision on the application of undisputed facts; thus, Cablevision is entitled to summary judgment on this point. This holding, we must emphasize, does not generally permit content delivery networks to avoid all copyright liability by making copies of each item of content and associating one unique copy with each subscriber to the network, or by giving their subscribers the capacity to make their own individual copies. We do not address whether such a network operator would be able to escape any other form of copyright liability, such as liability for unauthorized reproductions or liability for contributory infringement. In sum, because we find, on undisputed facts, that Cablevision's proposed RS-DVR system would not directly infringe plaintiffs' exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works, we grant summary judgment in favor of Cablevision with respect to both rights.