Court Sides With Dish Over ABC in DVR Fight
Dish Network won a legal victory Wednesday as a federal judge denied broadcaster ABC’s request to shut down features of its “Hopper” digital-video recorder.
The decision comes as satellite TV operator Dish is in negotiations with ABC-parent Walt Disney Co. about renewing the companies’ carriage agreement, which expires at the end of this month. ABC’s concerns about the Hopper are one of several tensions between the companies and could be a factor in those talks, analysts say.
Broadcasters including ABC say the Hopper infringes on their copyrights. The service has a feature that automatically records all primetime broadcast programming and another that allows users to automatically skip over ads during that programming.