A federal district judge in Los Angeles has handed the electronics maker Sonicblue a courtroom victory, ruling that the company does not have to monitor the TV-watching habits of thousands of people who use the company's ReplayTV 4000 personal video recorder.
The ruling, issued late Friday by U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles, reverses an April decision by Magistrate Charles Eick that required Sonicblue to gather "all available information" about what TV shows are copied, stored, viewed without commercials or traded using the ReplayTV 4000.
Eick had ordered that the information be turned over to the television networks and movie studios that are suing Sonicblue for releasing the device, a recorder that allows people to "AutoSkip" over commercials and trade pay-TV shows with people who might not have paid for the content. The media companies -- including Paramount, Universal, Disney, CBS, ABC and NBC -- allege that the ReplayTV 4000 violates copyright laws.
Cooper's new decision (PDF) was based on the idea that the earlier ruling "impermissibly requires defendants to create new data which does not now exist."
Sonicblue had argued that it would have had to go out of its way to create new technology -- including writing new software -- to comply with Eick's ruling.
The judge agreed, writing that "defendants would be required to undertake a major software development effort, incur substantial expense, and spend approximately four months doing so."
Under rules of evidence, she said, "a party cannot be compelled to create ... new documents solely for (the data's) production."
The judge also said that her decision did not answer the question of whether or not the information sought by media companies was relevant to the case. "However, this information can be obtained by plaintiffs by conducting surveys, a traditional method of gleaning customer data in copyright-infringement cases," she wrote.
Privacy concerns and the possible interruption in service to Sonicblue's customers also raise "serious questions," the judge said, but they did not form the basis of her decision.
Privacy advocates were nevertheless pleased by the ruling. In a statement put out by Sonicblue, Megan Gray, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the decision "a victory for consumers."
Laurence Pulgram, an attorney for Sonicblue, said this ruling "should do it" for the question of monitoring Sonicblue's customers.
Representatives for media companies involved in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
