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 organizations 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,” said Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We’re absolutely not surprised.”