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Appeals Court Reverses “Remote DVR” Decision

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed a lower court decision that, as CDT and a number of others argued in a 2007 amicus brief, had the potential to chill innovation in products that use the Internet to provide storage and computing functions from remote locations. The lower court ruling had blocked Cablevision from rolling out a digital video recorder (DVR) system that stores recorded television programs on remote servers instead of in set top devices in the customers’ homes. CDT applauds today’s decision, which finds that providing such a remote DVR does not constitute direct copyright infringement. CDT also welcomes the court’s finding that transitory data held in buffers for a mere 1.2 seconds do not constitute "copies" for purposes of the Copyright Act.