Subsidizing wireless usage in this way would only give rise to this myth that smartphone data plans are capped because of congestion and a supposed high cost of moving data. However, studies show that the cost of delivering content to wireless customers has dropped while the user base has increased.

Well-heeled content providers like ESPN would not be hurt financially by subsidies, but if they became standard, that extra could effectively put up a huge roadblock — or at least a very nasty speed bump — to smaller startups seeking to compete.

If content providers do begin subsidizing wireless plans, then consumers should demand lower monthly rates — or the elimination of data caps entirely, as that extra cost will be borne by ESPN and others. Of course, we all know that will never happen.

McClintock (CBS' exec VP of communications) sure doesn't mince words, but he does mince reality. The broadcasters are not faring well against Aereo, with the courts all apparently recognizing that the company has carefully followed the letter of the law established in the Cablevision ruling. It's bizarre that he would try to characterize the situation as an obvious win for CBS when the exact opposite is true — especially in a conversation with tech analysts and journalists. Still, points for confidence, I guess.

It didn't end there, either:

After [Verge editor Ben] Popper noted that CBS' signals were not being stolen and that the public owned the airwaves, McClintock responded: "Yet it's ok for Aereo to profit from the same public. Hmmm..."

Greenfield got in a zinger by noting the similarities between Aereo and Amazon's services. "Amazon 'makes money'" Greenfield wrote on Twitter, "on selling antennas to watch broadcast TV, and they ship to Boston."

The question of "profiting from the public" is a red herring, and not a smart one for CBS to bring up. After all, the networks profit from their public broadcasts, too. Do they plan to give back all the money they have made from selling ads on the publicly-owned airwaves for which they paid no access fee?

The fact that the airwaves are owned by the public only means what it sounds like. It means the ability to broadcast on the airwaves is permitted by the public — it does not have anything to do with how the public accesses those airwaves, or whether or not someone is making a profit. As Greenfield points out, by McClintock's logic, it would be wrong to charge money for a TV antenna.

The Twitter exchange perfectly highlights a key issue here: thanks to the vagaries of copyright law, the whole fight over Aereo (and over remote DVR) is basically a fight about the length of a wire. Selling a home TV antenna? Legal. Renting a home TV antenna to someone? Yup. Selling someone a setup that hooks their antenna into a computer and then into their network, so they can watch it on any of their devices? No problem. Renting that same setup to them? Sure thing.

But doing any of that from slightly further away? 'Illegal!' cry the networks.

Luckily, despite the networks' facade of confidence and silly threats to pull their broadcasts, the courts seem to be well aware of the ridiculousness of their argument. Given the recent rulings, it seems unlikely that a new lawsuit in Boston would gain much traction — but, of course, just the fact that the lawsuits keep on coming serves as a roadblock to Aereo's innovation. The broken analogies enforced by copyright law have resulted in an insane situation with online streaming (among other things), and the fact that the fight with Aereo has even gone this far (and shows no signs of stopping) just underscores the severity of the problem.

LAST Sunday afternoon, some friends and I were hanging out in a local bar, talking about what we’d be doing that evening. It turned out that we all had the same plan: to watch the season premiere of “Game of Thrones.” But only one person in our group had a cable television subscription to HBO, where it is shown. The rest of us had a crafty workaround.

We were each going to use HBO Go, the network’s video Web site, to stream the show online — but not our own accounts. To gain access, one friend planned to use the login of the father of a childhood friend. Another would use his mother’s account. I had the information of a guy in New Jersey that I had once met in a Mexican restaurant.

Warner Archive Instant [is] a service that streams vintage films and shows from the vast Warner Bros. catalog. It's an offshoot of the existing Warner Archive DVD and Blu-ray site, but the digital selection is unfortunately rather limited — there are only 123 distinct titles available as of now. While most of these aren't typically found through other outlets, it's still a pretty small selection, particularly for the $9.99 monthly fee associated with the service. Warner says that it'll be constantly adding and rotating new content in and out, but for now it's not the most robust offering around.

Things have changed a bit this time around to stream March Madness online. Last year, the NCAA charged a small fee for access to all of the games. This time around, any of the games that are broadcast on CBS are free for anyone to stream online. The games that are broadcast on TBS, TNT or truTV, the collection of Turner Broadcasting-owned channels, will require a cable subscription authentication.

"I've never thought that copyright inhibits innovation."

It has been fifteen years since Congress acted expansively in the copyright space. During that period, Congress was able to leave a very visible and far-reaching imprint on the development of both law and commerce. It enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), which created rules of the road for online intermediaries (e.g., Internet service providers) and a general prohibition on the circumvention of technological protection measures (so-called “TPMs”) employed by copyright owners to protect their content. The DMCA also created a rulemaking mechanism by which proponents could make the case for temporary exemptions to the TPM provisions in order to facilitate fair use or other noninfringing uses (the “section 1201 rulemaking”).

Nonetheless, a major portion of the current copyright statute was enacted in 1976. It took over two decades to negotiate, and was drafted to address analog issues and to bring the United States into better harmony with international standards, namely the Berne Convention. Moreover, although the Act is rightly hailed by many as an accomplishment in balance and compromise, its long trajectory defeated any hope that it could be effective into the 21st century In fact, former Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer, who had worked closely with Congress for much of the 1976 revision process, later called it a “good 1950 copyright law.”

I think it is time for Congress to think about the next great copyright act, which will need to be more forward thinking and flexible than before. Because the dissemination of content is so pervasive to life in the 21st century, the law also should be less technical and more helpful to those who need to navigate it. Certainly some guidance could be given through regulations and education. But my point is, if one needs an army of lawyers to understand the basic precepts of the law, then it is time for a new law.

A central equation for Congress to consider is what does and does not belong under a copyright owner’s control in the digital age. I do not believe that the control of copyright owners should be absolute, but it needs to be meaningful. People around the world increasingly are accessing content on mobile devices and fewer and fewer of them will need or desire the physical copies that were so central to the 19th and 20th century copyright laws.

Moreover, while philosophical discussions have a place in policy debates, amending the law eventually comes down to the negotiation of complex and sometimes arcane provisions of the statute, requiring leadership from Congress and assistance from expert agencies like mine. The list of issues is long: clarifying the scope of exclusive rights, revising exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives, addressing orphan works, accommodating persons who have print disabilities, providing guidance to educational institutions, exempting incidental copies in appropriate instances, updating enforcement provisions, providing guidance on statutory damages, reviewing the efficacy of the DMCA, assisting with small copyright claims, reforming the music marketplace, updating the framework for cable and satellite transmissions, encouraging new licensing regimes, and improving the systems of copyright registration and recordation.

If Congress considers copyright revision, a primary challenge will be keeping the public interest at the forefront, including how to define the public interest and who may speak for it. Any number of organizations may feel justified in this role, and on many issues there may in fact be many voices, but there is no singular party or proxy. In revising the law, Congress should look to the equities of the statute as a whole, and strive for balance in the overall framework. It is both possible and necessary to have a copyright law that combinessafeguards for free expression, guarantees of due process, mechanisms for access, and respect for intellectual property.

To this end, I would like to state something that I hope is uncontroversial. The issues of authors are intertwined with the interests of the public. As the first beneficiaries of the copyright law, they are not a counterweight to the public interest but instead are at the very center of the equation. In the words of the Supreme Court, “[t]he immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an ‘author’s’ creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.” Congress has a duty to keep authors in its mind’s eye, including songwriters, book authors, filmmakers, photographers, and visual artists. A law that does not provide for authors would be illogical —hardly a copyright law at all.

The next great copyright act must be forward thinking but flexible. It should not attempt to answer the entire universe of possible questions, but, no matter what, it must serve the public interest. Thus, it must confirm and rationalize certain fundamental aspects of the law, including the ability of authors and their licensees to control and exploit their creative works, whether content is distributed on the street or streamed from the cloud.
This control cannot be absolute, but it needs to be meaningful. After all, people around the world increasingly are accessing content on mobile devices and fewer and fewer of them will need or desire the physical copies that were so central to the 19th and 20th century copyright laws. Thus, Congress has a central equation to consider today: what does and does not belong under a copyright owner’s control. Congress also will want to consider the exceptions and limitations, enforcement tools, licensing schemes, and the registration system it wants for the 21st century.

The scope of the distribution right also is a central theme today, as courts work through whether and how it may be implicated and enforced in relation to use of works over the Internet.58 One key issue in the courts is the degree to which a claimed violation of the exclusive right to authorize distribution of a work requires a showing of actual dissemination of a work or whether the act of making the work available online is sufficient.

One critical issue is the ability of law enforcement to prosecute the rising tide of illegal streaming in the criminal context. Streaming implicates the copyright owner’s exclusive right of public performance: it is a major means by which copyright owners license their rights in sporting events, television programs, movies, and music to customers, who in turn access the content on their televisions, smart phones, tablets, or video consoles. Under current law there is a disparity that may have once been of little consequence but is today a major problem: prosecutors may pursue felony charges in the case of illegal reproductions or distributions, but are limited to misdemeanor charges when the work is streamed, even where such conduct is large scale, willful and undertaken for a profit motive. As a practical matter, prosecutors have little incentive to file charges at all, or to pursue only those cases where the rights of reproduction and distribution are also at issue. This lack of parity neither reflects nor serves the digital marketplace.

This brings me to statutory damages. Some would eliminate the precondition in section 412 of the Copyright Act that limits the availability of statutory damages to those who register with the Copyright Office in a timely manner.74 They believe that it places an undue burden on the people who need statutory damages the most but are least likely to be aware of the condition, namely authors. Cost is also an issue, particularly for prolific creators like photographers, who may be unable to register each and every work under a separate application and have for years enjoyed a reduced rate through a group registration option. This gives photographers the ability to claim statutory damages, but often without providing effective public disclosure of what the group registration covers. Section 412 also acts as a filter, reducing the number of claims from copyright owners and the level of exposure for infringers. Unfortunately, it does this for bad faith actors and good faith actors alike.

Section 412 was designed as a precaution and an incentive in 1976 — a time when the law was moving to automatic protection and many were worried about the ramifications for authors, the public record and the Library of Congress’ collection. Section 412 thus creates a bargain: the copyright owner preserves his ability to elect statutory damages in exchange for registering, thereby ensuring a more complete public record of copyright information and a better collection for the Library of Congress.

[....] More globally, arguments abound on the subject of statutory damages, suggesting that they are either too high, too low, too easy, or too hard to pursue. Statutory damages have long been an important part of copyright law to ensure that copyright owners are compensated for infringement, at least where actual damages are unworkable. The Copyright Act of 1790 included a provision awarding the copyright owner fifty cents for every sheet of an unauthorized copy that was printed, published, or imported or exposed to sale.77 Statutory damages should remain squarely in the next great copyright act irrespective of section 412. However, there may be plenty to do on the edges, including providing guidance to the courts (e.g., in considering whether exponential awards against individuals for the infringement of large numbers of works should bear a relationship to the actual harm or profit involved), and finding new ways to improve the public record of copyright ownership.

The section 512 safe harbors in particular have generated more than their fair share of litigation on issues such as eligibility for the safe harbor, inducement, and monitoring. Some of these issues were imaginable at the time at the time of their enactment, and others were not. There are other concerns that go more generally to the question of whether the burdens of notice and takedown are fairly shared between copyright owners and intermediaries.

On the one hand, Congress may believe that in a digital marketplace, the copyright owner should control all copies of his work, particularly because digital copies are perfect copies (not dog-eared copies of lesser value) or because in online commerce the migration from the sale of copies to the proffering of licenses has negated the issue. On the other hand, Congress may find that the general principle of first sale has ongoing merit in the digital age and can be adequately policed through technology — for example, measures that would prevent or destroy duplicative copies. Or, more simply, Congress may not want a copyright law where everything is licensed and nothing is owned.

Perhaps the next great copyright act could take a new approach to term, not for the purpose of amending it downward, but for the purpose of injecting some balance into the equation. More specifically, perhaps the law could shift the burden of the last twenty years from the user to the copyright owner, so that at least in some instances, copyright owners would have to assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner. And if they did not, the works would enter the public domain.

Finally, as noted earlier, the copyright law has become progressively unreadable during the very time it has become increasingly pervasive.

When the Copyright Act was enacted, it contained seventy-three sections and the entire statute was fifty-seven pages long. Today, it contains 137 sections and is 280 pages long, nearly five times the size of the original. As former Register Marybeth Peters observed in 2007, the current “copyright law reads like the tax code, and there are sections that are incomprehensible to most people and difficult to me.”

This is not merely a paradox; it is damaging to the rule of law. The next great copyright act should be as accessible as possible.

But in order to have a robust knowledge economy, we need content that is both professional and informal; we need content that consists of information, commentary, and entertainment, or sometimes all of these combined into one; and we need content that is licensed, content that is free, or in some cases, content that is licensed for free.

The pact is expected to last 10 years and split revenues 50-50 between owners and players, similar to the CBAs in the NFL and NBA. The players are set to return to the ice, but will NHL fans come back as well? The 2004-05 NHL lockout that wiped out an entire season did not keep fans away when hockey returned in October 2005. In fact, it was the exact opposite in many cases. Attendance increased for the majority of teams with nine teams experiencing a bump of at least 5% compared to the 2003-04 season. The Pittsburgh Penguins led the way with a 33% gain, as recent top draft picks Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin made their Pens’ debut. Attendance for the Carolina Hurricanes rose 26% thanks to the team’s Southeast Division crown and first Stanley Cup title.

NHL teams derived 47% of their revenues last season from arena revenues controlled by the fan. These include gate receipts, concessions and parking. The other half of revenues hail from media contracts, luxury suites, sponsors and non-hockey events. Of the major U.S. sports, baseball is the next highest at 46%, but that figure is set to drop with the explosion of local media deals in the sport like the impending Los Angeles Dodgers deal worth more than $6 billion. The corresponding percentages in the NBA and NFL are 34% and 24% respectively. The NHL simply does not have the media rights fee millions (or billions) the other sports possess.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber and you have kids, you’re about to make those kids happier. Netflix and Disney just inked a new deal, making the former the exclusive American subscription TV service for “first-run live-action and animated feature films from The Walt Disney Studios.”

This marks the first time that a major Hollywood studio decided to side with a digital distribution rather than a traditional TV provider. The deal is also a high-water mark for a company that some were speculating was ripe for takeover as recently as last month.

“The pay TV business as we know it is on really safe grounds until sports distribution changes,” Cryan added. “It’s technically difficult to distribute that stuff online at scale. In addition to that, the business is stacked up so you pay a lot for ESPN and other sports channels not available elsewhere. Until that changes, the core of the pay TV business is on relatively safe ground.”

In its order dismissing the FAC, the Court dismissed with prejudice all claims against the Regents and claims seeking damages against individual defendants in their official capacity on the grounds that these individual defendants are immune from suit under the doctrine of sovereign immunity... Plaintiffs have verbatim re-pleaded those claimsfrom the FAC for purposes of appeal.... As these claims have already been dismissed with prejudice, the Court does not analyze them further.

Under the Copyright Act, distributed items must be “material objects” in which a copy is “fixed.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. Plaintiffs’ new allegations that “the Video Furnace system administrator retains an original copy of the AVP DVD while distributing copies to end users, which copies remain on the end user’s computer as long as the Video Furnace InStream player remains open” does not change this outcome. For a copy to be fixed, it must be “sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than a transitory duration.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. The “copy” on the end users computer, as alleged, is not fixed.

This Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to cure the defects with their DMCA claim. First, the allegations in the SAC do not support a claim that Defendants violated 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A) by using the HVS Video Furnace software to “circumvent . . . a technological measure that effectively controls access to” the DVDs because UCLA had lawful access to the DVDs and Plaintiffs essentially allege improper usage of the DVDs.

Have you heard of Donnie McClurkin, French Montana or Grupo Bryndis? If you haven't you're not alone. They are artists whose sales ranks on Amazon are 4,752, 17,000 and 183,187, respectively. These are all working artists who live well outside the mainstream - no steady rotation on broadcast radio, no high profile opening slots on major tours, no front page placement in online retail. What they also have in common is a steady income from Pandora. In the next twelve months Pandora is on track to pay performance fees of $100,228, $138,567 and $114,192, respectively, for the music we play to their large and fast-growing audiences on Pandora.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For over two thousand artists Pandora will pay over $10,000 dollars each over the next 12 months (including one of my favorites, the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson), and for more than 800 we'll pay over $50,000, more than the income of the average American household. For top earners like Coldplay, Adele, Wiz Khalifa, Jason Aldean and others Pandora is already paying over $1 million each. Drake and Lill Wayne are fast approaching a $3 million annual rate each.

The service, named HBO Nordic AB, will allow customers in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark to stream subtitled versions of the same content available in the US. Original series like Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, as well as movies that are featured by the channel, will be streamable at HBONordic.com.

Suppose I could offer you a choice of two technologies for watching TV online. Behind Door Number One sits a free-to-watch service that uses off-the-shelf technology and that buffers just enough of each show to put the live stream on the Internet. Behind Door Number Two lies a subscription service that requires custom-designed hardware and makes dozens of copies of each show. Which sounds easier to build—and to use? More importantly, which is more likely to be legal?

If you went with Door Number One, then you are a sane person, untainted by the depravity of modern copyright law. But you are also wrong. The company behind Door Number One, iCraveTV, was enjoined out of existence a decade ago. The company behind Door Number Two, Aereo, just survived its first round in court and is still going strong.

And once again, it's a business model that would not exist in a world with copyright policy that was not demonstrably insane. Rapidly spinning optical discs make sense as a distribution technology because they're compact and durable. But they're a hassle and a half for playback, because they scratch, skip, and make random access a pain. If you're going to use the Internet for distribution, better to take the DVDs out of the picture and use them as coasters. But since Cablevision had opened up what seemed like a gap in copyright law, Zediva poured shiny lacquered discs into the breach.

Perhaps we can think about the problem of copyright on the Internet another way. Instead of asking which back-end technologies are legal, it might make more sense to ask what it is legal for users to do with computers on the front end. This approach would let people spend less time worrying about the exact definitions of "reproduction" and "performance" and more time thinking about users' rights, especially under fair use.

Cablevision itself illustrates what might have been. The whole point of the RS-DVR was that it was a perfect substitute for a home DVR. Reasoning by analogy, then, we might say that the two ought to either both be legal or both be illegal. And since home DVRs seem here to stay, it ought to be permissible for Cablevision to offer its customers exactly the same service they could have gotten by buying a gizmo. Call it "noninfringing personal fair use" and we can all go home.

First, ivi's live retransmissions of plaintiffs' copyrighted programming over the Internet would substantially diminish the value of the programming.

Plaintiffs broadcast their copyrighted programming to various communities at different scheduled times, for example, based on time zone or local network provider. For this reason, negotiated Internet retransmissions -- for example, on Hulu.com -- typically delay Internet broadcasts as not to disrupt plaintiffs' broadcast distribution models, reduce the live broadcast audience, or divert the live broadcast audience to the Internet.

If ivi were allowed to continue retransmitting plaintiffs' programming live, nationally (and arguably, internationally), over the Internet, and without plaintiffs' consent, ivi could make plaintiffs' programming available earlier in certain time zones than scheduled by the programs' copyright holders or paying retransmission rights holders. ivi's retransmissions of plaintiffs' copyrighted programming without their consent thus would devalue the programming by reducing its "live" value and undermining existing and prospective retransmission fees, negotiations, and agreements. ivi's retransmissions would dilute plaintiffs' programming and their control over their product.

Clearly, the best way to support Zoe (and other independent artists like her) is to purchases directly from the artist. Just by taking a look at the pie chart, it is evident that the vast majority (nearly 97%) of her recorded music revenue comes from fans purchasing her music as opposed to streaming it. Less than $300 came from Spotify, while more than $45,000 came from iTunes.

“Music sales have been a consistent 60-70% of my total income,” Zoe told Hypebot. “The rest comes from concert fees and film/commercial licensing.”

“The income of a non-mainstream artist like me is a patchwork quilt and streaming is currently one tiny square in that quilt,” Zoe said in her Google Doc. 

Streaming is not yet a replacement for digital sales, and to conflate the two is a mistake. I do not see streaming as a threat to my income, just like I've never regarded file sharing as a threat but as a convenient way to hear music. If people really like my music, I still believe they'll support it somewhere, somehow.

I've said multiple times what my issue with Spotify is: fairness. I care about making the playing field level for all recording artists: signed or unsigned. Let it be a meritocracy.

I wish Spotify would do more to facilitate the connection between listeners and artists - i.e. show that the artists is playing nearby, or add links to buy music. It's early days, so maybe this will happen eventually.

My financial picture would be worse if I was on a record label. Some people say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make instrumental cello music. There is about as much chance of my music becoming mainstream as there is of me being elected President of the USA (hint: not possible, I was born in Canada and there are naked pictures of me at Burning Man). While it is probably true that the right label could help with the reach part, I don't think they could help me enough to offset their cut, and you know what….no label has ever approached me and the ones I've approached said no, so I'm guessing they think the same thing.

Is myVidster therefore a contributory infringer if a visitor to its website bookmarks the video and later someone clicks on the bookmark and views the video? myVidster is not just adding a frame around the video screen that the visitor is watching. Like a telephone exchange connecting two telephones, it is providing a connection between the server that hosts the video and the computer of myVidster’s visitor. But as long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right, conferred by the Copyright Act, “to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies” and “distribute copies . . . of the copyrighted work to the public.” 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (3). His bypassing Flava’s pay wall by viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it. That is a bad thing to do (in either case) but it is not copyright infringement. The infringer is the customer of Flava who copied Flava’s copyrighted video by uploading it to the Internet.

Flava contends that by providing a connection to websites that contain illegal copies of its copyrighted videos, myVidster is encouraging its subscribers to circumvent Flava’s pay wall, thus reducing Flava’s income. No doubt. But unless those visitors copy the videos they are viewing on the infringers’ websites, myVidster isn’t increasing the amount of infringement.... An employee of Flava who embezzled corporate funds would be doing the same thing—reducing Flava’s income—but would not be infringing Flava’s copyrights by doing so. myVidster displays names and addresses (that’s what the thumbnails are, in effect) of videos hosted elsewhere on the Internet that may or may not be copyrighted. Someone who uses one of those addresses to bypass Flava’s pay wall and watch a copyrighted video for free is no more a copyright infringer than if he had snuck into a movie theater and watched a copyrighted movie without buying a ticket. The facilitator of conduct that doesn’t infringe copyright is not a contributory infringer.

myVidster received “takedown” notices from Flava designed to activate the duty of an Internet service provider to ban repeat infringers from its website, and Flava contends that myVidster failed to comply with the notices. But this is irrelevant unless myVidster is contributing to infringement; a noninfringer doesn’t need a safe harbor.

Coons said it was "truly memorable" when one of his sons shook him awake and asked "why I wanted to break the Internet and why Justin Bieber thought I should go to jail."

The pop star had suggested that supporters of the Protect IP Act should be arrested after a campaign against the bill had claimed it could result in Bieber going to jail for singing songs that belonged to other artists.

"That was my first warning that we were not communicating effectively," Coons said. He added that he believes some elements of SOPA "overreached" and "really did pose some risk to the Internet."

Now consider the calls from some governments that Google and others pre-screen user-generated material. Just how do they think anyone can do that when every second there's one or more hours of new material flooding in? The challenge is particularly acute for video, which does not lend itself to automatic screening, unlike text, say. Such machine-based approaches are still extremely rough, and will either let through material governments want censored, or else err massively in the other direction, blocking all kinds of harmless footage.

As Google's latest figures for YouTube demonstrate, the mismatch between what governments want and what is possible is only going to get worse, thanks to Moore's Law and its analogs for storage and bandwidth. It's not clear how this is going to be resolved, but with more and more politicians calling for "something to be done", the chances of a good outcome based on rational policy making don't look good.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

All documents concerning Aereo or the Aereo service, including without limitation (i) communications with or about Aereo, the Aereo service or Aereo’s business plans, (ii) presentations or other documents received from Aereo, and (iii) documents or communications concerning the potential impact of Aereo or the Aereo service on broadcast television networks and stations, or the producers of broadcast television.

In the case of a purchased content locker service, the percentage of subpart C service revenue applicable in step 1 of &sec;385.22(b)(l)(i) is 12%. For the avoidance of doubt, paragraph (l)(i) of the definition of subpart C service revenue shall not apply. The minimum for use in step 1 of &sec;385.22(b)(l)(ii) is the appropriate subminimum as described in paragraph (b) of this section for the accounting period, where the all-in percentage applicable to &sec;385.23(b)(l) is 18%), and the sound recording-only percentage applicable to &sec;385.23(b)(2) is 22%, except that for purposes of paragraph (b) of this section the applicable consideration expensed by the service for the relevant rights shall consist only of applicable consideration expensed by the service, if any, that is incremental to the applicable consideration expensed for the rights to make the relevant permanent digital downloads and ringtones.

Limited download means a digital transmission of a sound recording of a musical work to an end user, other than a stream, that results in a specifically identifiable reproduction of that sound recording that is only accessible for listening for—

(1) An amount of time not to exceed 1 month from the time of the transmission (unless the service provider, in lieu of retransmitting the same sound recording as another limited download, separately and upon specific request of the end user made through a live network connection, reauthorizes use for another time period not to exceed 1 month), or in the case of a subscription transmission, a period of time following the end of the applicable subscription no longer than a subscription renewal period or 3 months, whichever is shorter; or

(2) A specified number of times not to exceed 12 (unless the service provider, in lieu of retransmitting the same sound recording as another limited download, separately and upon specific request of the end user made through a live network connection, reauthorizes use of another series of 12 or fewer plays), or in the case of a subscription transmission, 12 times after the end of the applicable subscription.

(3) A limited download is a general digital phonorecord delivery under 17 U.S.C. 115(c)(3)(C) and (D).

A year into the competition, the Korbell team won the first Progress Prize with an 8.43% improvement. They reported more than 2000 hours of work in order to come up with the final combination of 107 algorithms that gave them this prize. And, they gave us the source code. We looked at the two underlying algorithms with the best performance in the ensemble: Matrix Factorization (which the community generally called SVD, Singular Value Decomposition) and Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBM). SVD by itself provided a 0.8914 RMSE (root mean squared error), while RBM alone provided a competitive but slightly worse 0.8990 RMSE. A linear blend of these two reduced the error to 0.88. To put these algorithms to use, we had to work to overcome some limitations, for instance that they were built to handle 100 million ratings, instead of the more than 5 billion that we have, and that they were not built to adapt as members added more ratings. But once we overcame those challenges, we put the two algorithms into production, where they are still used as part of our recommendation engine.

We evaluated some of the new methods offline but the additional accuracy gains that we measured did not seem to justify the engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment.

One of the reasons our focus in the recommendation algorithms has changed is because Netflix as a whole has changed dramatically in the last few years. Netflix launched an instant streaming service in 2007, one year after the Netflix Prize began. Streaming has not only changed the way our members interact with the service, but also the type of data available to use in our algorithms. For DVDs our goal is to help people fill their queue with titles to receive in the mail over the coming days and weeks; selection is distant in time from viewing, people select carefully because exchanging a DVD for another takes more than a day, and we get no feedback during viewing. For streaming members are looking for something great to watch right now; they can sample a few videos before settling on one, they can consume several in one session, and we can observe viewing statistics such as whether a video was watched fully or only partially.