New York – Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) on Friday asked a federal court
to declare that existing carriage agreement gives it the right to stream live
video from Viacom (NYSE: VIA) networks to its subscribers in their homes via its new iPad
application. After launching the live video streaming iPad app on March 15, Time
Warner Cable received complaints from Viacom, as well as Fox (NYSE: NWS) and
Discovery (NASD: DISCA), and removed those channels from the app.
The company said the app
has now been downloaded more than 360,000 times, and currently features live
streaming of 43 channels.
"We have steadfastly maintained that we have the
rights to allow our customers to view this programming in their homes, over our
cable systems, without artificial limits on the screens they can use to do so,
and we are asking the court to confirm our view," said Time Warner Cable
executive vice president and general counsel Marc Lawrence-Apfelbaum.
"We’re
at an impasse with a handful of network owners, and we need an impartial third
party to referee the situation and confirm that our interpretation is
correct," the company says in a blog post.
"We thought the most
efficient way to settle this would be to go before a judge and ask for a
decision that, while noncombative, would establish the rights that we bargained
for. If we weren’t completely certain that we had the rights to distribute
television to our customers’ iPads within their homes, we wouldn’t be asking
for the court’s attention."
Related Links:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110407006721/en
http://tinyurl.com/4yk5tkj
(TWC blog)
http://tinyurl.com/3dpx9yf
(DMW previous coverage)
