Movie Companies Sue Internet Movie Streamer

Image via CrunchBaseIn Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. et al. v. WTV Systems, Inc, WTV Systems, LLC d/b/a /Zediva & Venka Tesh Srinivasan (Case No. 11-cv-02817), recently filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is seeking damages for copyright infringement [17 U.S.C. secs. 106(4), 501] from a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company allegedly streaming new Hollywood films over the Internet without license from the film studios.

As reported by the Media Law Prof Blog and Associated Press, the plaintiffs allege they are being deprived of  their right to publicly perform their works by the defendants' streaming movies to customers without paying a license fee to the studios that produced the films.  The defendants argue they are not required to pay license fees because their business is essentially a digital equivalent of a movie-rental store.  The plaintiffs dispute the characterization, arguing rather, that the defendants are a video-on-demand operation illegally streaming movies over the Internet.