A Provo-based streaming service has filed a federal lawsuit against several major film studios in federal court, asking the judge for a declaration that its methods of filtering objectionable content from films and television shows are legal.
VidAngel — which was sued in federal court last year by four Hollywood studios that said it was altering original works and selling the altered versions without paying royalties — asked for three separate declarations, one for each of its methods, in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Utah’s U.S. District Court.
In the case involving the four studios, VidAngel was ordered to cease and desist by a federal judge in California. But the filtering method disputed in that lawsuit is one for which the Utah company is asking for a judicial declaration.
VidAngel’s suit says several of the defendants have threatened litigation if the company does not stop filtering copyrighted content. But VidAngel argues that its methods are legal under the 2005 Family Home Movie Act, which exempts companies from criminal infringement under certain circumstances.
Those circumstances include “making limited portions of the audio or video content of a motion picture for private home viewing imperceptible” and ”the creation of technology that enables such editing.”
VidAngel says its filtering service is the ”only option” for people who want to filter content they deem objectionable for themselves and their families.
Originally, the Utah company says it purchased and stored DVDs and Blu-ray copies of each motion picture it offered viewers. The streaming service says it decrypted content to ”tag” it for potentially objectionable verbal and graphic content. Viewers would “buy” the movie, select which types of content they wanted to filter — such as nudity a specific word, then ”sell” the movie back to VidAngel for credit on the site.
The company stopped using this method as of Dec. 29, the suit says.
In recent months, the company says, it has found a way to offer a similar service without decrypting discs by virtually tagging content from “the signal that would otherwise be transmitted to a television set.”
The company’s new method of filtering — which it is currently offering to consumers — uses licensed streaming services, or LSS, such as Netflix or Amazon Video, to which users subscribe separately. The company subscribes to its own account and “captures a stream of each motion picture,” ”tags the captured stream for objectionable content” and stores the edited stream in its system.
Users who connect their streaming service accounts with VidAngel view the “appropriate” content while their original accounts play a TV show or movie.
In the lawsuit, VidAngel says it has “compensated motion picture copyright owners for their content through ... the sale of DVDs” and, under its current method, “through the fees they charge LSSs whenever a consumer purchases” an account.
VidAngel also demands a jury trial in the case.
Named as defendants in the Thursday filing were Canadian-based Sullivan Entertainment Inc. and California-based companies Marvel Characters Inc. MVL Film Finance LLC, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC, Fox Digital Entertainment Inc., Fox Broadcasting Company Inc., New World Pictures Ltd., Castle Rock Entertainment Inc., Turner Entertainment Co., Village Roadshow Pictures Entertainment Inc., Regency Entertainment (USA) Inc. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.