In Battle With MPAA, Zediva Is Down For The Count

When the Zediva DVD-streaming service popped up earlier this year, its novel legal strategy immediately became a subject of debate among law school professors and digital copyright pundits. Whatever the bounds of copyright are in the digital age, Zediva now appears to be outside them.

A Los Angeles federal judge has hit the service with an injunction that will force Zediva to stop streaming very soon. Zediva hoped to preserve its business with a legal argument that it wasn't so different from a bricks-and-mortar DVD shop; Zediva was simply “place-shifting” the physical DVD rental, making the internet into essentially a “cord” from a user’s computer to a DVD player borrowed from Zediva. Unlike services like Netflix or digital rentals like those available on iTunes and Amazon, Zediva never made a digital copy. It simply put a physical DVD into a DVD player located in its Silicon Valley data center and streamed the movie online to its customers. It’s now clear that strategy, described by some as a “loophole,” isn't going to work so easily. Zediva was hit with a lawsuit by the Motion Picture Association of America back in April, and although the small company lawyered up and vigorously defended itself, it’s now lost a key battle.