Cable Companies Are Hiding Behind Copyright to Keep You Paying Rental Fees

The cable television industry is now claiming that copyright laws ought to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from letting you own your own cable box, according to several recent public filings made with the regulator.

Industry heavyweights like the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and Comcast/NBC Universal suggest they and they alone hold the copyright needed to create cable boxes, effectively shutting the door on efforts by any third-party, be it Apple or Google or a startup working out of a garage, to create better and cheaper boxes.

It's a bogus argument.

"We literally predicted this," Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation," told Motherboard. "We're absolutely not surprised."

First, some background.

The FCC in February went forward with a proposal that would bring competition into the cable set-top box market. That means instead of being forced to pay the likes of Comcast and Time Warner Cable some $231 per year in rental fees (netting them nearly $20 billion in yearly revenue) for a clunky cable box, according to a 2015 congressional report, you'd instead be able to buy outright a cable box produced by someone else. Exactly who that someone else is is anyone's guess, but it's not hard to imagine companies big and small clamoring for the opportunity to sell you a better cable box, or a even a software solution like a dedicated Roku or Chromecast app.

Besides, how hard can it be to make something better than this?

The FCC's thinking goes that just as you're able to buy a cable modem from Amazon and have that added to your Time Warner Cable broadband account, you should also be able to buy a set-top box from someone other than your cable company and use that instead. Cable companies will lose out on nearly $20 billion in yearly rental fees—oh well!

Anyway, the copyright arguments go like this.

"The device manufacturers are not parties to the content license agreements, which is exactly why MVPDs [cable companies] need to limit such devices to the presentation of MVPD service in a controlled manner, such as through apps that honor all licensing commitments," the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said in a filing, suggesting that, say, Apple or Google don't have an agreement in place to transmit The Big Bang Theory to cable subscribers subscribers, so they shouldn't be allowed to create a set-top box.

A snippet from a recent Comcast/NBC Universal's filing reads: "By mandating that MVPDs transmit copyright owners' content to third-party navigation devices without authorization from the copyright owner…"

Other organizations also crying copyright include AT&T, the MPAA, and the Copyright Alliance, an industry consortium that counts CBS, Disney, and Sony Pictures among its members.

"They're going onto Capitol Hill and saying they're rights are being infringed and that the whole system will collapse," said Falcon.

The first public comment period ends on May 23, but Falcon recommended that concerned citizens reach directly out to their members of Congress to help pile on the pressure. "This process is a little bit of a marathon," he said, "but the public has a direct role to play."