<story><title>TV monitoring service is fair use, judge rules</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/tv-monitoring-service-is-fair-use-judge-rules/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fivedogit</author><text>I built and ran a broadcast monitoring business for 5 years from 2003 to 2007, competing with services such as TVEyes and Critical Mention. It was called RooseveltMedia.com. At peak, it recorded and catalogued about 400+ shows per day in 15 media markets and had about 75 customers.&lt;p&gt;As we grew, I knew we needed to expand nationwide (which would require raising VC). My saying was &amp;quot;We need Johnson and Johnson, not Congressman Johnson&amp;#x27;s office.&amp;quot; but this question of legality loomed very large. Legal or illegal? If illegal, no investor in his right mind would give us money. Unfortunately, the evidence I had at the time pointed towards &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;legal&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;1. There were lots of lawsuits. This Fox vs. TVEyes is not the first. We definitely tiptoed around TV groups so as not to draw attention.&lt;p&gt;2. The International Association of Broadcast Monitors (IABM, a group of regional services and some single-market self-employed folks) spent several hundred thousand dollars to try to get the law rewritten so that royalties would be set in stone, much like jukeboxes. Why would they do this if they didn&amp;#x27;t all also believe it was illegal? In any case, the effort failed.&lt;p&gt;With this evidence in hand, I tried to grow the company organically, but it became untenable. We weren&amp;#x27;t getting enough money from the single-market (or few-market) customers to fund the expansion. By contrast, Critical Mention was self-funded by a dot-commer, and completely ate our lunch. Even if we&amp;#x27;d attempted to raise money, the fundraising sidetrack would have set us back by a few more miles and I had zero additional bandwidth. There really wasn&amp;#x27;t a good answer to the question.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, despite finding product-market fit almost immediately with this freshman business effort, I decided to pivot into a more &amp;quot;legitimate&amp;quot; business. I altered the tech to provide archiving systems for TV stations... and it went over like a lead balloon, cratering the businesses and leaving me with a pile of personal debt which took a couple of years of &amp;quot;real world&amp;quot; work to pay off.&lt;p&gt;Since then I&amp;#x27;ve tried to start 2 more companies (huzon.tv and words4chrome.com) and while my execution and engineering skills have become vastly better, neither found product-market fit like the first. Beginner&amp;#x27;s luck, I guess.</text></comment>
<story><title>TV monitoring service is fair use, judge rules</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/tv-monitoring-service-is-fair-use-judge-rules/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>toxican</author><text>&amp;gt;The company has more than 2,200 subscribers, including the White House, 100 members of Congress, the Department of Defense, as well as big news organizations like Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC, and the Associated Press.&lt;p&gt;Yeah I don&amp;#x27;t think they were ever in any real danger. This isn&amp;#x27;t something average joe consumers like us use, this is something big corps, media companies, and politicians use.</text></comment>