On Wednesday, March 6, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Calfornia issued an order granting summary judgment in favor a several major film studios against Provo company, VidAngel. While the company continues to present an optimistic look at the future, this most recent turn of events does not look good for them.
The legal battle began when a group of major film studios, including Disney, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm sued VidAngel in 2016 for copyright infringement over their business model of ripping DVDs to their server in order to provide edited content to their users. This battle resulted in a preliminary injunction against VidAngel to prevent them from streaming any of the plaintiffs’ content. The injunction was upheld by the 9th Circuit in 2017.
In its most recent ruling, the court held that VidAngel’s DVD-based business model violated copyright in several ways:
- bypassing the encryption on the DVD and Blu-ray discs violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA);
- copying the works onto VidAngel servers violates the Plaintiffs’ exclusive right to reproduce the works; and
- streaming the movies to VidAngel customers violates the Plaintiffs’ exclusive right to perform the works publicly.
While this ruling addresses VidAngel’s previous DVD-based business model, it does not appear to address VidAngel's current system, which is based on licensed streaming services (LSS's). Under its current business model, VidAngel customers pay a separate monthly fee for the ability to filter content available through their existing LSS subscription(s). Any future claims based on VidAngel's current business model remain to be determined.