The incoming Obama administration is asked to weigh in on what could be the most important copyright case since the United States Supreme Court ruling in 1984 involving VCRs and the public's right to record copyrighted movies at home.

Last August, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction against Cablevision Systems, which blocked Cablevision from offering customers a recording service that stores programming on the cable company's own servers instead of on customers' in-house recording devices.

On January 12, 2009, the United States Supreme Court invited the incoming Obama administration to "file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States," on whether or not cable operators should be allowed to permit their customers to store television programming on company servers to be viewed at a later time.

While the Second Circuit ruled that Cablevision was not actually doing any of the copying, and that any copying done would be by the individual customers who have the right, Hollywood and television programmers maintain that Cablevision's service directly infringes their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works.  


Sources: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/us-high-court-a.html http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08-448.htm
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/cablevisiondecision.pdf