Christendom would like people to believe that major studies sued VidAngel for filtering their movies. A headline at the increasingly preposterous Federalist reads: Hollywood Punishes VidAngel For Cleaning Up Their Smut. Over at CBN they got the headline right but the text includes: “The judge ruled the company violated the studios' copyrights by streaming filtered versions of their movies.”
The filtering was irrelevant to the verdict.
What the oh-too-clever VidAngel did was to purchase DVDs at retail. Then they would use software to break the copy protection and make a master copy illegally. VidAngel supposedly sold the stream to a user for $25 and refunded $24 upon “return.” Streaming services and Redbox have distribution deals with the major studios. VidAngel did not.Amazon, for example, goes 50-50 with the studios for paid streaming. When Amazon Prime streams a video for free, it pays the studio between $.04 and $.10 per customer hour of viewing depending upon “customer engagement.”
VidAngel has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since 2017. As of December 31, 2018 it has a negative net worth and assets of $4.7 million. To appeal a $62 million judgment they will be required to post a $62 million appeal bond which would seem to be all but impossible.
VidAngel changed its business model about a year ago, offering a filtering service on top of Amazon and Netflix for about ten bucks/month. It has not been profitable.
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