A+E Networks content will be available via Verizon, including on Yahoo and AOL, under a carriage renewal deal Verizon announced Wednesday. It said the agreement includes first-window rights for content from A+E Networks digital entity 45th & Dean as well as continued carriage of A+E content on Fios.
Any copyright-infringing use of TickBox streaming media players is being done by third parties not affiliated with the company and over which TickBox TV has no control, the company said in a docket 17-cv-7496 response (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Los Angeles, to an opposition to a motion for preliminary injunction. Georgia-based TickBox TV said its actions and those of its users can't be construed as a copyright violation, so the plaintiffs seeking a preliminary injunction -- Universal Columbia Disney, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon and Netflix -- can't show injunctive relief is necessary to prevent irreparable harm. TickBox TV also said even if injunctive relief is warranted, the content companies' proposed injunction -- enjoining all persons in any way associated with TickBox TV from “infringing in any manner" -- is "unreasonably broad and ambiguous." The content company plaintiffs, in their complaint (in Pacer) in October, argued that TickBox unambiguously gives users directions for setting up and adding third-party software intended for "unquestionably infringing purposes, most notably to obtain instantaneous, unrestricted, and unauthorized access to infringing streams" of their content. The companies' counsel didn't comment Friday.
Amazon previewed Digital Day Thursday in an email, teasing some of the 5,000 deals it will offer Friday on apps, games, TV shows, movies, digital comics and other categories. Movies on sale for up to 60 percent off include Wonder Woman, The Fate of the Furious, Moonlight and The Dark Tower. TV shows discounted by up to half include Game of Thrones, American Gods, This Is Us and Outlander, said Amazon. Customers who subscribe to HBO Now on Amazon will receive a $10 Amazon.com credit, and customers can get a 90-day free trial of the Tidal music streaming service. Other subscription offers: $20 off one month of UFC Fight Pass, 25 percent off a Plex membership, three months of Amazon Music Unlimited (new subscribers only), 25 percent off a year subscription to Boomerang, a month free of Grokker, a 30-day free trial to Filmstruck, 20 percent off a year subscription to Quello streaming concerts and a 50 percent discount subscription to Smithsonian Earth, it said. Some 5,000 titles will be discounted, a 40 percent increase over Digital Day 2016, Amazon said.
The operators of the interconnected PubFilm websites -- subject of a lawsuit brought in March by a variety of programmers (see 1703140033) -- defaulted by not appearing or responding to the complaint, U.S. District Clerk for the Southern District of New York Ruby Krajick certified in a docket 17-cv-875 filing (in Pacer) Friday. The plaintiffs alleged the PubFilm sites were pirated movie and TV streaming sites, and last week requested an entry of default, saying the defendants were served by email in February.
Roku’s first Christmas Day as a public company had its glitches. “We are aware that some Roku users report seeing an error code 001 on the TV during the Roku activation screen,” said a Roku customer support “service interruption” bulletin posted Monday at 9:50 a.m. PST. “Try disconnecting and reconnecting the power adapter,” said the bulletin. “You should be able to continue after restart. We are working diligently to address this issue and we will update this article with any changes. You will not need to do anything, or contact support. Please just try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.” Less than an hour later, at 10:45 a.m. PST, customer support reported that “systems look good and all should be working normally now.” Roku is “not commenting on the specifics” of the service interruption, including whether it came under the crush of a high volume of Christmas Day activations, said spokeswoman Tricia Mifsud.
Wave's carriage and streaming complaint against NBCUniversal and three Comcast regional sports networks (see 1712190041) is mystifying, NBCU said Tuesday. It said Wave's sale to RCN (see 1705220058) is expected to close within a month, and NBCU is offering an extension until then, while separately offering marketplace terms to RCN for continued carriage. It said it "has engaged with them fairly, on the same terms as other distributors. [Wave's] purported claim is without merit.”
NPD plans to launch a subscription video tracking service in May that will measure consumers’ “actual TV and movie viewing behavior at the title and episode level” on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, said the company. The service will offer insights into what subscribers are watching on various devices, including the viewers of specific content, how valuable individual titles are to overall viewing rates and “longitudinal viewing trends,” said NPD.
Comcast's NBCUniversal and three regional sports networks over-the-top offerings undermined Wave's ability to meet existing programming agreement terms, the smaller company said in an FCC unfair competition complaint to have been posted Tuesday. The petition for declaratory ruling said Comcast would settle for only "a Draconian remedy" that made competition against Comcast's MVPD services on the West Coast impossible. It said Comcast -- by increasingly making RSN content available via OTT -- resulted in cord cutting that made it difficult for the cable ISP to continue to meet contractually set penetration levels. It said NBCU and the RSNs in response demanded the RSNs be moved to Wave's Lifeline tier but that would have led to "an avalanche" of other services with tagalong rights also relocating to Lifeline, making it uncompetitive. It said NBCU in July demanded and received $2.7 million, mostly in damages, for the RSNs not being repositioned to Lifeline from the Expanded Basic Tier. It said ongoing talks with NBCU made it clear NBCU didn't actually want the RSN services repositioned but wanted the ongoing breach allegation "to sustain its Machiavellian plot" to block Wave from accessing the commercial arbitration remedy that was part of the Comcast/NBCU consent decree.
Comcast's NBCUniversal received NFL streaming rights for Sunday Night Football that extend to mobile phones starting with the 2018 season, NBCU said Monday. It said the deal allows NBCU to extend the authenticated streaming rights to its cable, satellite, telco and virtual MVPD partners.
Amazon will hold its second annual Digital Day Dec. 29, when consumers will be able to buy discounted movies, TV shows, mobile games, apps, and e-books. More than 5,000 digital offerings will be offered as deals, it said. Some deals will be available starting Dec. 26, but most will launch at 12 a.m. EST time on Dec. 29, Amazon said.