By Lucy Holmes Plovnick
Earlier this summer, Judge George H. Wu in the Central District of California ruled in Fox Television Stations, Inc. et al. v. AereoKiller, et al. that FilmOn X, a service providing paying subscribers with access to retransmitted broadcast signals over the Internet, was a “cable system” as that term is defined in the Copyright Act, and therefore eligible for the cable compulsory license set forth in Section 111 of the Copyright Act. The Section 111 statutory license allows cable systems to simultaneously retransmit broadcast signals into distant markets, provided that the cable operators submit royalties to the Copyright Office on a semi-annual basis and comply with all applicable FCC regulations.
