Locast is ready to pay $32 million to settle its copyright lawsuit

The operator of an over-the-air streaming service named Locast has recently agreed to pay $32 million and end all its operations for good with the aim to resolve claims. It was alleged that it infringes the four major copyrights of television networks. However, the matter was pending before Manhattan Federal Court. Locast halted all its service in the last month only following its loss on a key defense to the networks’ lawsuit in the month of August. The U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton was hearing the matter and also ordered the network to permanently stop its operations shortly after. Locast is famous for capturing signals from local broadcast stations and later retransmitting them over the internet. This process gives Americans access to free television that they couldn’t otherwise watch due to technical, geographic, or other reasons.

Attorney David Goodfriend founded the non-profit with the name Sports Fans Coalition NY that further owns Locast. He is famous for working for some big entities including the Clinton Administration, U.S. Federal Communications Commission, DISH Network, and is also currently a counsel at Weiner Brodsky Kider. The networks sued both Goodfriend and the non-profit in the year 2019. Goodfriend and Locast were represented by lawyers David Hosp of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, Michael Dockterman of Steptoe & Johnson, or Mitchell Stoltz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation before the Justice.

The attorney Gerson Zweifach of Williams & Connolly represented the networks before the court. On the other hand, attorney Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis represented the case of Fox Television Stations LLC and related entities separately. Locast had argued that it has become immune from the claims based on part of the Copyright Act allowing non-profits to retransmit media if they don’t charge more than it costs to operate their service, in an attempt to distinguish it from Aereo. It is a similar for-profit streaming service that the U.S. Supreme Court found violating copyright law in the year 2014.

Stanton said, “Locast's defense fails because it charged more than necessary to cover its costs, receiving $4.3 million from user payments last year compared to $2.4 million in costs. Locast provides free streams but interrupts non-paying users every 15 minutes to request donations, which users could avoid by paying for preferred access. Locast's donations are really a scale of fees for uninterrupted service.”

The case can be reached with the name American Broadcasting Companies Inc v. Goodfriend, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York bearing case no. 1:19-cv-07136.

This case will help in clearing several law-points ambiguities while deciding a case of such nature in near future.