Court finds Optus' 'cloud PVR' service does not breach Copyright

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 17:16

Telstra, the AFL and NRL have lost the first round in their battle to have the Optus TV Now service ruled in breach of the Copyright Act. However they are expected to appeal the court judgement handed down today.

In the Federal Court in Sydney Judge Steven Rares ruled that the service, which enables Optus mobile customers to record any free to air TV program 'in the cloud' for later playback on their PC, Mac or Optus mobile device, did not breach the Copyright Act.

Optus said it had been confident that the service was covered by the 2006 amendment to the Copyright Act. "The time shifting capabilities of Optus TV Now are no different to many other personal video recording services already available to consumer such as TiVo, Play TV, T-Box and Foxtel IQ," Optus said. "The Copyright Act was amended in 2006 to allow this type of innovation and we are very pleased the Court has confirmed this."

Telstra, the AFL and NRL were particularly galled by the service because it undermines multimillion dollar deals giving Telstra exclusive rights to deliver AFL and NRL matches to mobile devices. With Apple devices, Optus customers can watch the recording of the free to air broadcast with as little as two minutes delay. On others they must wait until the show being recorded has ended and the recording is complete.

If the judgement is confirmed at appeal it could give a boost to cloud computing in Australia. A similar judgement was handed down by a US court in 2008 and in a study: 'The Impact of Copyright Policy Changes on Venture Capital Investment in Cloud Computing Companies' Josh Lerner, a professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School, claimed to have found that this court decision had a significant positive impact on venture capital investment in cloud computing in the US.

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