## Facts

- On Command Video Corporation designed and supplied an in-room hotel movie system that delivered videocassette movies from centralized equipment to guest rooms.
- The system used a computer, electronic switching equipment, and a bank of video cassette players in a hotel equipment room connected by wiring to guest rooms.
- From the room, a guest used a remote control and the television’s microprocessor to select a movie; the system switched the chosen cassette player to that room and began playback.
- Each movie could be transmitted to only one room at a time; once selected, the movie was unavailable for selection by other rooms until it finished.
- The movie was viewable only in the requesting room; guests could not pause, rewind, or fast-forward. The tape rewound automatically after completion.
- Hotel staff could activate or deactivate access per room and could block adult titles upon request.
- Major motion picture companies owning copyrights in the movies contended the system infringed their exclusive public performance rights by transmitting the films to hotel guests for a fee.

## Issues

1. Whether transmissions of copyrighted motion pictures from a hotel’s centralized playback equipment to individual guest rooms constitute “public performances” under 17 U.S.C. §§ 101 and 106(4).
2. Whether the private character of a hotel room and one-room-at-a-time transmissions prevent application of the Copyright Act’s transmit clause.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on liability and denied On Command’s cross-motion.
- The court held that performances delivered through the hotel system were “public performances” within the meaning of § 101’s transmit clause.
- Because the transmissions were public performances, the system infringed the studios’ exclusive right to perform the works publicly under § 106(4).

## Legal Principles

- A work is performed “publicly” when a performance is transmitted “to the public” by any device or process, even if recipients receive it in separate places and at different times.
- The “public” inquiry focuses on the audience made capable of receiving the performance through the service (including successive, unrelated recipients), not solely on the privacy of the physical location where reception occurs.
- Transmissions to transient hotel guests offered commercially on demand can be public performances even when each particular transmission is received in a single room and not simultaneously by multiple rooms.
- A provider that operates a system delivering copyrighted content as an on-demand service may incur public-performance liability notwithstanding that users initiate individual selections.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that a hotel video-on-demand system that transmits movies from centralized equipment to guest rooms performs the works publicly under the Copyright Act’s transmit clause, and it entered summary judgment for the copyright owners on infringement liability.


On Command Video Corp. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., 777 F. Supp. 787 (N.D. Cal. 1991)