Attack On Reginald Denny - Other Related Litigation

Other Related Litigation

The best available footage of Denny's beating on April 29, 1992 was filmed by Marika Tur from a helicopter piloted by her then-husband, reporter Bob Tur. Together, they operated a company called Los Angeles News Service (LANS). In the rush to cover the riots as they developed, dozens of television networks and stations around the world simply copied and aired the LANS footage without permission.

LANS sued nearly all of them in federal court for copyright infringement; At least one of these lawsuits was successful. The last case was finally settled in 2004. Only a small handful of stations, mostly in California, already had preexisting agreements with LANS or waited to negotiate agreements before airing the footage, and thus were not sued.

In July 2006, the site YouTube was also sued in federal court for copyright infringement. Robert Tur said, in the lawsuit, that in one week's time, a version of the video uploaded by a YouTube user was viewed over 1,000 times via the site, thereby hurting his ability to license the video. The case was later dismissed by the United States District Court for the Central District of California.