COPYRIGHT VERDICT
Movie studios win order against filtered video-streaming service
VidAngel CE berates Hollywood studios' 'decades-long campaign to put movie filtering services out of business'
Los Angeles — Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner units won a court order shutting down a Utah-based video-streaming business that lets subscribers pay $1 to watch Hollywood movies stripped of nudity, violence and profanity. A federal judge on Monday granted the movie studios’ request to halt VidAngel’s services, while a lawsuit continues over whether the company’s business model is, as the studios alleges, an "end run" around copyright protections. US District Judge Andre Birotte Jr in Los Angeles said in his order granting a preliminary injunction that the studios, which also include Disney’s Lucasfilm unit, had shown they were likely to win on the merits of their claims and that they would be irreparably harmed if VidAngel was allowed to continue infringing their rights while the lawsuit was being decided. The studios claim VidAngel operates as an unlicensed video-on-demand service. The company buys DVD and Blue-ray disc copies of newly released titles that it purports ...
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