NP: The Klaxons, Myths Of The Near Future

Mark Cuban flags a lawsuit against CableVision for their "virtual" DVR. The suit sounds an awful lot like the one leveled against MP3.com way back when, for their service that would let you stream music from their servers once you "proved" that you owned the same record.

The problem with both offerings, from the copyright perspective, is that both MP3.com and CableVision made copies of copyrighted material for purposes that, technically, violated that copyright. While, on the surface, it looks like you, the end user, aren't doing anything different than what would be considered fair use -- making a copy for personal use at a different time or in a different place -- the fact that it's a third-party making that copy and providing that different time or different place as a service offering changes the game.

I'm not saying it's not a mistake, just that there is an established legal precedent for it.