| Following a long legal battle a District Court in Southern Florida announced on October 20, 2006 that DISH Network will be mandated to shut-off all of their customers’ local channels if the customer receives them as Distant Network Signals (‘DNS’). These effected DISH Network customers will no longer receive these channels after December 1, 2006. DISH Network is in danger of losing what it reports are roughly 800,000 DNS subscribers. Other numbers indicate that DISH Network will have to terminate DNS channels to 1.2 million customers in all, including about 600,000 who have been receiving the programming legally.
Fox Broadcasting requested the injunction on behalf of itself, ABC, CBS and NBC days after DISH Network agreed to pay the networks $100 million and terminate transmission of those channels to customers who are not eligible to receive them.
The basis of the court battle is The Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1988 (“SHVA”), which gives satellite carriers a compulsory, statutory license to transmit copyrighted distant network programming to “unserved households,” that is, households unable to receive network programming at a specified level of intensity through the use of conventional rooftop antennas.
The case alleged that DISH Network was retransmitting network programs to “served” households and thereby infringing the network’s exclusive rights, under the Copyright Act, to control the retransmission of their programs.
Several Federal courts that have heard this case have found that DISH Network repeatedly sold DNS channels to hundreds of thousands of ineligible customers.
DNS channels are typically available if the customer does not qualify for local channels. This may be due to the customer residing in an area in which local channels are just not available or due to the fact that the customer resides behind a wall or is blocked by a building that prevents them from receiving the local channels. The solution is DNS channels. Such customers can receive DNS national feeds from New York and Los Angeles so they can watch CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.
DIRECT TV satellite TV customers will not be affected and will continue to receive their DNS channels as always!
The ruling will impact those customers that correctly qualified for DNS channels as well as those that did not but still received them.
In conclusion, DISH Network customers wanting satellite service have two choices- never watching CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox OR switching to DIRECTV.
What can you do if you are a DISH Network customer? The answer is simple. Contact us to switch to DIRECT TV today and avoid any loss to your programming needs.
|
