Web VCR service RecordTV.com said Wednesday that it is selling
its assets as a result of legal and financial troubles.
The Los Angeles-based company, which briefly offered consumers the ability
to record TV shows and play them back online, said it plans to sell its
intellectual property, including trademarks, domain names and technologies.
The announcement provides the latest cautionary tale for companies seeking
to marry television and the Internet, a troubled relationship that has led
to numerous legal tangles. Although RecordTV hoped to avoid courtroom
battles, the company soon followed the path of Canadian start-up
iCraveTV.com, which aimed to put live broadcast TV on the Web in 1999.
iCraveTV was hit with massive lawsuits from U.S. and Canadian
broadcasters. As a result, its efforts fell into ruins.
Last month, RecordTV settled a
lawsuit with the Motion Picture Association of America that charged the company with copyright
violations for recording movies and streaming them online without
permission. RecordTV agreed to pay $50,000 and said it would not record or
showcase any of the works owned by the big studios without first gaining
permission.
"We were kind of in a catch-22," said RecordTV Chief Executive David Simon.
"We couldn't raise funding because of the legal issues...but we couldn't
also fight the lawsuit without raising funding."
Founded in November 1999, RecordTV set out to create a Web-based VCR
through its technologies, dubbed One-Click Recording and Useit. One-Click
Recording let people record content from local TV and basic cable programs
and stream it via their computers; Useit is a digital rights management
technology that prevents unauthorized copying and downloading.
Since its inception, the company has been plagued with controversy, drawing backlash from
major movie and TV studios.
"We gave up and couldn't keep fighting," Simon said. "Maybe one of the
movie studios itself who own the content and has the ability to do it and
the rights to do it can do something with (our technologies)...but at this
point, I guess I've got to give up the ghost."
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