Studios, Broadcasters In Line To Sue iCraveTV.com

Shortly after the National Football League
and the National Basketball Association filed a copyright-infringement
lawsuit against a Canadian Webcaster today, Hollywood movie
studios and three of the country's largest television networks piled
on with their own litigation.

The lawsuits, all filed in a Pittsburgh, Pa., District Court, aim
to put the lid on iCraveTV.com, the Toronto, Ontario-based Web site
that has been relaying off-the-air television signals across the
Web.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told Newsbytes that the two sports
leagues allege iCraveTV.com has been illegally transmitting
copyrighted game telecasts over the Internet to computer users in
the US.

Coordinated by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA),
the lawsuit from the studios and broadcasters calls iCraveTV.com's
operation "one of the largest and most brazen thefts of
intellectual property ever committed in the United States."

ICraveTV.com, has been transmitting off-air television signals via
the Web since it launched Nov. 30. Canadian broadcasters as well as
international film and television producers have been threatening
legal action since they heard about the service, operated by a
company called TVRadioNow Corp.

Jack Valenti, MPAA president and chief executive officer (CEO),
said: "This is a clear and damaging case of theft by iCraveTV that
threatens the intellectual property, investments and achievements
of the US television and motion picture industry. This kind of
cyberspace stealing must be stopped, wherever it occurs, because it
violates the principles of US copyright law.

"Copyrighted programs and films don't fall from the skies," Valenti
said. "They evolve from creative artists, supported by considerable
financial investments."

Both lawsuits name iCraveTV.com president and TVRadioNow CEO Bill
Craig and the company's international sales manager, George Simons.
The lawsuits were filed in Pennsylvania because the two men
recently resided there, the lawsuits say.

The NFL and NBA claim iCraveTV.com violates the US Copyright Act
and interferes with the leagues' contracts with its network
broadcast partners. They also claim iCraveTV.com has generated
revenues through its technique of placing small "banner" ads on a
frame surrounding the video feeds within viewers' RealVideo
players. The leagues say such advertising conflicts with the
leagues' contracts with broadcasters that pay for the right to
televise the games.

The leagues say they are asking the court to stop iCraveTV.com from
Webcasting the games. In addition, the leagues are seeking damages
of up to $150,000 for each of 36 NFL or NBA broadcasts they say
have been Webcast by the site to date - a total of some $5.4 million.

The MPAA lawsuit asks the court to bar the streaming of copyrighted
programming via the iCraveTV.com site "or any other Internet site
or any online facility of any kind" without the permission of the
copyright holders.

Listed as the plaintiffs in the MPAA lawsuit are: Twentieth Century
Fox Film Corp., Disney Enterprises Inc., Columbia TriStar
Television Inc., Columbia Pictures Television Inc., Columbia
Pictures Industries Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Orion
Pictures Corp., Paramount Pictures Corp., Universal City Studios
Inc.; Time Warner Entertainment Co. L.P. (Warner Bros.), ABC Inc.,
CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Fox Broadcasting Co.

ICraveTV.com's Craig has said that the Canadian Radio-television
and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) made broadcasting over the
Internet legal in Canada when it decided earlier this year not to
regulate Internet communication. Specifically, the Canadian
regulator said that, in cases where the Internet content would
normally fall under the country's Broadcasting Act, such
transmissions would be "exempt from regulation" online.

But critics such as the NFL and the broadcasters say that
exemptions from broadcasting regulations don't protect iCraveTV.com
from copyright laws.

The NFL's McCarthy told Newsbytes in early December that the
league, which owns broadcast rights to its games, was among those
which first fired a warning shot over the bow of iCraveTV.com soon
after the site went live. The league has been promising a lawsuit
if iCraveTV.com did not stop transmitting the signals of stations
carrying NFL games.

The site relays signals from 17 channels that are currently
available in iCraveTV.com's home base in Toronto. The channels
represent most of Canada's broadcast television networks -
including the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -
as well as such US-based services as NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and PBS.

NFL or NBA games are seen on Fox, CBS and ABC, as well as on
Canadian networks Global TV and CTV.

Craig points out that his site is promoted as being available only
to Canadians, and that users must enter a Canadian telephone area
code to signify their place of residence before viewing the TV
feeds.

McCarthy said such barriers are easy for Web surfers to overcome.
"I'm not much of a hacker," he said during an earlier interview,
"but I found it easy to log on, giving a (Toronto) 416 area code
and access the service."

An iCraveTV.com spokesman was not immediately available to comment
on today's lawsuit.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com