Cablevision's network DVR isn't illegal, immoral, and fattening after all, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The ruling follows years of legal action that began in May 2006 when broadcast TV networks and movie studios sued Cablevision for proposing a money-saving DVR that would use network storage in lieu of a hard disk drive. Cablevision called it a Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder (RS-DVR) and said it would record up to 80 hours of programming. The cable operator lost the case in March 2007.

The plaintiffs--which included ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Disney, Paramount, and Universal--claimed that Cablevision would have violated copyright laws by allowing consumers to record programming onto networked hard drives. They regarded the process as a dead ringer for video on demand. But the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York says the RS-DVR "would not directly infringe plaintiffs' exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works." The case will now go back to the district court in New York for further mulling over. See detailed story at News.com.