Re: video performances in stores

On Sun, 5 Feb 1995, Mary Jensen (List) wrote:

... premise and some cases deleted ...

> Columbia Pictures v. Professional Real Estate Investors, 866 F2d
> 278 (9th Cir. 1989)
> When hotels rent rooms to private guests, the rooms contain VCRS
> controlled by the guests, and the guests go to the desk, rent videos
> and take them back to their rooms to view, there is no public
> performance because the hotel room is a substitute for a private home.
>
> On Command Video v. Columbia Pictures, 764 F. Supp 1372 (ND Cal 1991)
> When a hotel rents rooms to guests and the rooms are wired so that
> a guest can call up and pay for a movie and the hotel employees can
> cause it to be displayed on the TV in the room, there is a public
> performance. The hotel rooms are private places, but there is
> a public performance because the performance occurs in the area
> where the employees control it and is transmitted to the hotel room.
> The rest of the hotel is a public place.
>
> Until the last of these decisions, many experts believed that
> performances in private viewing rooms in libraries were distinguishable
> from the video store cases. That is much more difficult after the
> last two cases. There is still a slim argument that when single
> VCR/TV units are placed in private viewing rooms in libraries, no
> public performance occurs. But if there is any kind of central
> control and transmission to the viewing rooms, the last case sort of
> kills the argument.

This last case seems exactly analogous to "video on demand" -- with the implication that VOD in a private home is a public performance ?!

Joshua Yeidel, Learning Systems | yeidel[_at_]tomar.accs.wsu.edu
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