Livestreaming of events is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of sportscasting, Intertrust said Tuesday. A broad majority of fans watching on traditional TV channels want to move to livestreamed viewing, which enables such features as watch parties and enhanced viewing via virtual reality, it said. Broadcast TV sports programming has been a breakwall against what might otherwise be a more serious decline in legacy TV viewership, it said. Over-the-top ad revenue is starting to rival subscription revenue, it said.

Oral argument will be Sept. 19 in San Francisco in the Reno, Nevada, appeal of a lower court's rejection of the city's suit seeking franchise fees from Hulu and Netflix (see 2202080088), the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a docket notation filed Sunday (docket 21-16560).

Streaming video pirate site Israel.TV must pay Israeli video content companies $7.65 million in statutory damages plus legal fees and costs, per a default judgment order Wednesday (docket 1:21-cv-11024) in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The order said Israel.TV never responded or otherwise appeared in the suit. The order said if the plaintiffs find any newly created domains operated by the defendant, the order's permanent injunction will be amended to include them. Before seeking relief from content delivery network services provider Cloudflare, the plaintiffs will try to get relief for the identified domains from hosting providers and domain name registries, but after that Cloudflare will cease providing video streaming and content delivery services to those domains, the judgment said. Cloudflare is fighting a contempt charge being sought by the plaintiffs for its alleged role in piracy by its Israel.TV customer (see 2206170029).

DirecTV and people suing it for its telemarketing practices disagree about class certification being sought by the plaintiffs in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) complaint. The plaintiffs told the U.S. District Court in Wheeling, West Virginia, their case is almost identical to litigation brought against Dish Network, with that suit's class action status certified by a unanimous 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, last week in a reply in support of their class certification motion (docket 5:17-cv-00179). It said issues like "class ascertainability and standing" can be established using the same expert testimony that went through that 4th Circuit decision. DirecTV in its opposition to the class certification motion said the Wheeling court lacks jurisdiction over claims brought by non-West Virginia class members and shouldn't certify a class that includes them. It said the plaintiffs haven't shown that common issues predominate, and determining whether particular calls violated TCPA would require individualized inquiries.

Roku is adding NBC local news channels from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington, D.C.; Hartford, Connecticut, and South Florida to The Roku Channel, it announced with NBCUniversal Tuesday. Additional channels will be added to The Roku Channel's Live TV Guide in coming months. The Roku Channel’s Live TV guide has more than 300 linear channels.

MindGeek and its adult video hosting site Pornhub materially contributed to the child sexual abuse materials on the site, and that makes it a content creator not entitled to Communications Decency Act Section 230 protections, plaintiffs told the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Monday. In their opposition (docket 2:21-cv-04920) to MindGeek's motion to dismiss their suit (see 2205240029), the plaintiffs -- all of whom allegedly were juvenile subjects of sex trafficking and abuse videos hosted on the site -- said the MindGeek defendants knowingly benefited from their participation by soliciting, curating, modifying and reuploading illegal content. Counsel for the defendants didn't comment.

Longport and Irvintgon, New Jersey, appealed to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a lower court's dismissal of their suit seeking franchise fees from Netflix and Hulu under the state's Cable TV Act (see 2205230028) per a notice of appeal Friday (docket 2:21-cv-15303). Counsel for the streamers didn't comment.

Google and tech industry interests are backing Cloudflare in its fight against being found in contempt of the terms of a permanent injunction against a video privacy site/Cloudflare customer (see 2206160024). Google said it's conferring with counsel for the plaintiffs, a variety of Israeli video content companies that sued pirate site Israel.TV, in advance of a possible motion to modify or dissolve the injunctions, in a letter (docket 21-cv-11024) dated Thursday to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Manhattan. It said it's concerned that injunctions bind the parties, their agents and others participating with them, but the injunctions in this case bid various third parties who fall outside those categories, "including Google." Nor do the injunctions make clear what the bound parties are supposed to do or not do, it said. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, in a request to file an amicus brief in opposition to the contempt motion, said they "are greatly concerned by the possible consequences that a finding of contempt, and any enforcement of the underlying injunction against unaffiliated non-party online service providers, will have on the due process rights of those service providers, and on the free speech and due process rights of Internet users generally." They said in the case of a copyright infringement suit against a website operator, proceedings against unaffiliated service providers "present a particular danger of blocking lawful and constitutionally protected speech, and of imposing unfair and unnecessary compliance burdens." Outside counsel for the video content companies didn't comment Friday.

The 50-50 Charter-Comcast joint venture to develop a national streaming platform on branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs (see 2206170008) brings together two “legacy cable providers” that have “an aptitude for the aggregation side,” plus lots of “interactions with consumers who are at the point where they're considering video products,” Charter Chief Financial Officer Jessica Fischer told a Credit Suisse investors conference Wednesday. “When you click that together with what really Comcast has created, it's a world-class platform that we can deploy fully across a national footprint,” she said. “Our opportunity to sort of reach scale there and to do so pretty quickly is very good.” Charter’s cable subscriptions have “shrunk more slowly” than those of “some of our peers” because “we're always looking to provide the packages that consumers want,” said Fischer. The offering with Comcast “enables us to sort of do that even more broadly, whether consumers want linear, whether they want streaming, whether they want skinny, whether they want fully loaded,” she said. “We're going to be in a place to pull together what it is that consumers are looking for.”

Cloudflare and Israeli video content providers are at odds over Cloudflare's alleged role in now-defunct pirate video site Israel.tv. Cloudflare said it can't remove content from customers' websites, so the contempt motion against it for allegedly violating the default judgment and permanent injunction awarded the plaintiffs in April is "puzzling," the cybersecurity services firm told the U.S. District Court in Manhattan Thursday in an opposition (docket 21-cv-11024). It said the contempt motion seeks to direct Cloudflare outside the injunction's scope even though the problem with the pirate site was resolved because Israel.tv is no longer available online. The content company plaintiffs said in the contempt motion if Cloudflare quit providing its content delivery network services provided to Israell.tv "then the infringing service might be prevented from continuing its illegal conduct."