Copyright Infringement in the Ether: RAM Buffering and the Copyright Act’s Duration Requirement

Home television watchers have long enjoyed the right to “timeshift,” or record a program for later viewing. In the 1980s, time-shifting was accomplished using a videocassette recorder (VCR) and a blank tape. This technology was eventually replaced with digital video recorders (DVRs), devices that write television content onto a hard drive. The right of television watchers to time-shift was held to be fair use of copyrighted content by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. Time-shifting was recently put under renewed scrutiny regarding a novel digital video recording technology developed by Cablevision, a cable television provider. The Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder (RS-DVR) is a service that allows cable subscribers to record and play back video content in the absence of a set-top DVR. Instead, time-shifted programs are copied onto remote servers controlled and maintained at Cablevision’s head-end, a central facility that houses the hardware on which the content is copied and stored.