PBS and Sports Leagues Hit Cable Royalty Decision in Appellant Briefs
PBS unquestionably was supposed to see a hike in its royalty fees in 2015-17, and the Library of Congress' Copyright Royalty Board wrongly created a new method that disproportionately affected PBS, it told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…
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D.C. Circuit. PBS and sports leagues are suing the CRB (docket 24-1260), challenging its 2024 cable royalty funds distribution decision. In its initial brief, PBS said the growth in public broadcasting content on distant cable TV systems should have driven higher royalties. Moreover, PBS said the CRB judges adopted a model that cut the value of signals transmitted by cable system operators that paid the minimum fee required, but they didn't apply that model evenly to everyone claiming copyright royalty fees. In their joint initial brief, the sports league appellants said the board purported to split the difference between two competing methodologies, when even the CRB recognized that neither measured the relative marketplace value of each claimant's programming. "The result was the definition of arbitrary, and it must be vacated," they said. Filing a separate joint appeal were the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, NBA, NFL, NHL, WNBA and NCAA.