Missouri Appellate Court Sides With Streamers in Fees Fight
The Missouri Court of Appeals backed a lower court's decision in favor of streaming service providers that were fighting an attempt by communities to charge them video service provider (VSP) fees. In an opinion Tuesday, Judge Ellen Ribaudo upheld a summary judgment against Creve Coeur, Missouri, and other municipalities that sought VSP fees from DirecTV and Dish Network for their streaming services. While the communities argued that they were owed fees accrued before the state amended its Video Service Provider Act in 2024, Ribaudo said the amended language didn't substantively alter the description of excluded content. The amended definition of "video service" was meant only to clarify the law, and the legislature clearly didn't intend to indicate that streaming content was subject to VSP fees prior to the 2024 change.
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Therefore, the Missouri circuit court was correct to grant summary judgment to DirecTV and Dish Network, Ribaudo said. The VSP Act "never applied to streaming content [and] neither the amendment nor the circuit court’s judgment extinguished an indebtedness because there was no indebtedness to extinguish." She also rejected Creve Coeur's argument that the streaming service providers were using the communities' public rights-of-way without compensation, so they were unjustly enriched. Since DirecTV and Dish provide streaming content, they aren't VSPs and thus aren't obligated to pay VSP fees, the judge concluded.