Jurors on Monday awarded $50 million in punitive damages to Mahim Khan, a former production assistant who worked at his Los Angeles-based firms, attorney Gloria Allred said. The same panel last week awarded $8.25 million in compensatory damages for battery, sexual battery and sexual harassment.
CBS, Fox and NBC have settled with the streaming company FilmOn, bringing an end to a long-running copyright dispute that was pending at several appellate circuits throughout the nation.
OTT streaming service FilmOn X, has filed a petition for rehearing of the appeals court decision denying it recognition as a cable system and eligible for a compulsory license under the Copyright Act.
Today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a seismic victory in favor of streaming company FilmOn, handing significant relief to broadcasters like CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC who were aghast by a federal judge’s decision in July 2015 that streamers could be deemed to be a “cable system” eligible for a compulsory license under the Copyright Act.
OTT Internet TV service FilmOn X has set out its case against the appeal by US broadcast networks’ of the July 2015 ruling by a judge that FilmOn X is entitled to a compulsory license under the Copyright Act of 1976.
Exclusives
FilmOn, that Aereo copycat service that seeks to deliver the signals of over-the-air television stations to consumers’ computers for a fee, has lost another round in its attempt to be recognized as a cable system. The decision by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois joined courts in New York and DC in determining that FilmOn did not qualify for a statutory copyright license. Only a lone court in California has thus far agreed with FilmOn’s position, and that decision is on appeal.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected FilmOn.com Inc.’s claims that a judge abused his discretion by holding the company in contempt and penalizing it $90,000. The company also was ordered to pay more than $100,000 in legal fees.
Online video distributor FilmOn is not entitled to a compulsory cable license that would enable it to stream TV programs, a coalition of TV broadcasters argues in new court papers. The broadcasters want the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a decision issued last year by U.S. District Court Judge George Wu in Los Angeles, who said that FilmOn should be considered a “cable system,” and therefore entitled to a cable license.
Split Decision On FilmOn Copyright License
The U.S. District Court in Washington has decided that FilmOn could not rely on the compulsory license of Section 111 of the 1976 Copyright Act to retransmit the signals of over-the-air television stations to consumers over the Internet. That puts it at odds with an earlier opinion from a federal court in California that ruled that FilmOn was entitled to the license. “[T]his dispute could be resolved in any number of ways, short of a return trip to the Supreme Court. But it is an issue that will no doubt be revisited in some forum or another in the not too distant future.”
A D.C. federal judge has ruled that FilmOn is liable for infringing the public performance rights of Fox Television and other major broadcasters and has dealt a blow to the digital streamer’s argument that it is entitled to a compulsory license of programming.
Web video distributor FilmOn X is not entitled to a license that would enable it to stream television programs online, a coalition of broadcasters argues in new court papers. The broadcasters are asking the 9th Circuit for permission to appeal an “aberrant decision” issued last month by U.S District Court Judge George Wu in Los Angeles, who sided with FilmOn on a key issue: Wu wrote that FilmOn X is a “cable system,” potentially entitled to a compulsory license.
The broadcast TV networks were hit with a legal setback on Thursday when a federal judge issued a ruling declaring that the streaming company FilmOn was potentially entitled to a compulsory license of broadcasters’ copyrighted programming. If the judge’s opinion survives scrutiny on appeal, it could mean that CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC have to license their programming to a digital outlet at below-market rates.
The Arena Football League has signed a one-year partnership with IP-delivered digital television platform FilmOn Networks that will make the service the official provider of international Arena Football. This is gives the AFL access to FilmOn’s 47 million monthly unique users outside of the United States.
With votes coming any day now, the FCC could be primed to begin a process that would give online video providers like FilmOn and Aereo access to some of the advantages enjoyed by cable and satellite TV services.
Now that the court has ruled against Aereo for copyright infringement, broadcasters are taking on the FilmOn, which is launching a new streaming service it says won’t have legal issues. Broadcasters say the company’s new type of streaming service, called “teleporter,” is no more legitimate than any other that streams TV shows without licenses.
FilmOn Has Much More Than Broadcast TV
Like Aereo, FilmOn offers over-the-air TV channels through a website and mobile apps. Also similar to Aereo, FilmOn’s offerings are affected by Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision saying that such a setup is prohibited under U.S. copyright law, at least without paying broadcasters. FilmOn offers broadcast stations from nearly 20 markets in the U.S. That’s bound to go away following Wednesday’s ruling, unless FilmOn is able to negotiate licensing deals with some or all of the broadcasters. Besides over-the-air channels, FilmOn offers more than 600 on all sorts of topics, including fashion, travel, comedy and news.
On Tuesday, a judge in New York City agreed with a July 29 request from CBS and ordered that David’s free-TV-over-the-Internet service pay up what it still owes on a $1.6 million copyright infringement and injunction settlement reached last July.
The launch on Tuesday marks the free-TV-via-Web provider’s 12th in the U.S. and fourth in the region covered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued a preliminary injunction against FilmOn in December.
Another month, another salvo in the ongoing multi-pronged legal trench warfare between the broadcasters and FilmOn founder Alki David. This time, it’s CBS who is back in court against the billionaire digital media entrepreneur. On Monday the network asked U.S. District Court in New York to enter an order to ensure that David holds up his part of a $1.6 million copyright infringement settlement reached last year.
FilmOn, one of Alki David’s digital TV companies, has reacted to a lawsuit that was filed in March with an answer and counterclaim. David is seeking a declaratory judgment that providing technology that allows consumers to receive free over-the-air broadcast signals via the Internet is not a violation of TV broadcasters’ copyrights.
Aereo’s careful plan to upend the TV industry was going fine — until a company run by a Los Angeles playboy, with a streaming service of its own, got in the way. Here’s an inside view of what happened.
FilmOn.com, the firm founded by controversial billionaire Alki David, has added hundreds of new channels to its video streaming platform as it looks to further disrupt traditional TV. FilmOn captures the signals of TV broadcasters, and then re-transmits them using a worldwide network to subscribers and users online and on connected devices.
On Thursday, FilmOn claimed rights to “Aero,” and that Aereo has taken a moniker that’s confusingly similar. The new lawsuit comes six months after David was sued after attempting to redub his own service as BarryDriller.com and AereoKiller. The basis for the lawsuit comes from the allegation that months before Bamboon Labs changed its name to Aereo, FilmOn already had a hold on “Aero.”
The chief executive of FilmOn, an online video site, has started a new service in competition with Aereo, a Barry Diller-backed site which streams broadcast TV networks’ signal over the Web to paying subscribers. FilmOn’s new site is called Barrydriller.com, which Alki David says is “homage to a great guy and at the same time, it’s drilling him a bit.”
The networks will get $1.6 million from Alki David, one of their big legal adversaries. Yet David plans to go forward anyway with plans to add networks to his online TV service.
Alki David, whose FilmOn venture was shut down by broadcasters for streaming their programming on the net without permissioni, dropped his suit against CBS for allegedly encouraging theft of other programming on Monday. But David is now promising to hit CBS with a “substantially” expanded lawsut in league with “numerous artists and other copyright owners.”
FilmOn founder Alki David says he plans to sue CBS and its CNET tech website for “illegal distribution of DRM [digital rights management] removal software as well as the illegal distribution of file sharing software with malicious intent to infringe on copyright.”
FilmOn may have been handed a temporary restraining order preventing it from re-streaming the network O&Os, but the service’s billionaire founder Alki David is retaliating by accusing plaintiff CBS with promoting piracy of music, movies and TV shows through CNET.
BSkyB, ITV and Channel 4 have joined U.S. broadcasters including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC in successfully stopping London-based Internet video service FilmOn from showing their channels without permission.
A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against FilmOn.com Plc., a company that had been streaming the signals of television stations over the Internet without permission of the stations or the networks or producers whose programming was being streamed.
Broadcasters in the United Kingdom have joined their U.S. counterparts in declaring the new TV streaming site FilmOn illegal.
ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC have asked a federal court to stop the Internet video service FilmOn.com from offering TV channels over the web and on Apple Inc.’s iPad for free.
