Court says skipping ads doesn’t violate copyright. That’s a big deal.

A Q&A with James Grimmelmann, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that modern digital video recorders with the ability to automatically skip commercials are permitted under copyright’s fair use doctrine.

The case pitted the satellite TV company Dish against the Fox television network. Dish had introduced a line of DVRs with two key features. The “Hopper” allows consumers to automatically skip over commercials. And the “Prime Time Anytime” feature allows consumers to automatically record prime-time shows for later viewing. In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit held that the Prime Time Anytime feature was legal under copyright’s fair use doctrine. And it held that commercial-skipping didn’t even raise copyright issues, since the features didn’t involve making copies of Fox’s content.