The CEA supports Dish in the ongoing litigation with CBS, and in a press release it decried CBS’s policy of forbidding coverage of companies it’s in litigation with. ”We are concerned the new review policy will have a negative impact on our brand should we continue the awards relationship as currently constructed,” Karen Chupka, SVP of CEA’s events and conferences, said in a statement. “We look forward to receiving new ideas to recognize the ‘best of the best’ products introduced at the International CES.” Meanwhile, Gary Shapiro, CEA president and CEO, said, “We are shocked that the ‘Tiffany’ network, which is known for its high journalistic standards would bar all its reporters from favorably describing classes of technology the network does not like.”

CNET SVP and general manager Mark Larkin said CNET “is committed to delivering in-depth coverage of consumer electronics.  We look forward to covering CES and the latest developments from the show as we have for well over a decade.” A CBS spokesperson told The Verge that the network had already decided it wouldn’t partner with CES again.

Dish, too, weighed in with a statement. President and CEO Joseph Clayton said, “I regret that the award has come in the face of CBS’ undermining of CNET’s editorial independence. We look forward to continuing our longstanding relationship with CNET’s editorial staff and hope they are able return to their long tradition of unbiased evaluation and commentary of the industry’s products and services.”

This post was updated with comments from CNET and Dish.

CNET was ready to give the Hopper with Sling DVR, a set-top box from Dish Network, a spot in the finals of its “Best in CES” awards at the Consumer Electronics Show — until a directive came through from the site’s corporate parent CBS that the Hopper couldn’t win the award, because CBS is suing the company over its AutoHop commercial-skipping feature.

Not only was the Hopper disqualified from the award, but CNET added an editor’s note to its review of the device saying it would no longer be reviewing any products that were the subject of litigation with its parent company — a list that would include both the Hopper and Aereo, the over-the-net video broadcasting startup backed by Barry Diller, which CBS is also suing.

As John Hermann of BuzzFeed noted, this is probably every tech journalist’s nightmare: being told by a corporate parent that they can’t do their jobs because the parent co. is involved in a a lawsuit. But it’s more than just a journalist’s nightmare — it could be a serious problem for CNET when it comes to maintaining the trust of their readers. The site noted that the restrictions only affects its reviews and not its news reporting, but will readers make that distinction?

Presumably, when someone goes to the CNET site looking for information about set-top boxes or video-streaming hardware, they want the most complete information they can find. If they know that certain products aren’t going to be reviewed because CBS doesn’t like them for some reason, that’s going to color their impressions of the site’s thoroughness in doing its reviews — and it might also make them wonder about what else is being left out.

The more cynical might wonder whether anyone will even notice once the CES decision blows over, but for media entities — even large ones — in times like these, the trust of their readers is more valuable than ever, and it should probably not be squandered lightly.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Hans Gerwitz

As CEO of CNET Networks, Ashe helped engineer the sale of the tech media company to CBS with impeccable timing — selling in mid-2008 for $1.8 billion ahead of the market shift. He spent six years at CNET, including the last two as CEO while the public company was under tremendous pressure. He managed the integration into CBS Interactive, sticking through his original commitment to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves into what he called “an operating job.”

This new job promises a mix as Walmart pushes ahead with what CEO Mike Duke calls “a long-term vision to win.” Walmart has yet to achieve the kind of success with digital content that some think it should have. His background at CNET and CBS could be a major plus.

Working for Walmart (the job is effective immediately) marks the first time Ashe has been on the retail side but his last two jobs included international aspects, something Walmart played up in the late Monday announcement.

He joined the board of LivingSocial during his break, so is familiar with the volatile daily deal space. LivingSocial’s investors include e-tailer Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), among Walmart’s largest online competitors.

FilmOn says it will be offering the content in partnership with XOS Digital, a company that provides digital asset management services to college sports organizations. It already offers its own sports on-demand service, XOS Sports, in which it offers paid rentals and full downloads of college games.

FilmOn’s channels, already live, offer viewers live games as well as archived fixtures. Users also have the option of recording programs to watch later either over TV, Internet or mobile devices using iOS or Android apps, or to subscribe to HD versions of the channels for a monthly fee. FilmOn offers a combination of free channels and those that require a subscription to watch.

It’s not clear just how extensive FilmOn’s coverage of NCAA fixtures will be — will it include the championships and all divisions? — or how FilmOn’s services work in conjunction with other rights deals between the NCAA and other media outlets: ESPN (NYSE: DIS), for example, extended its rights for NCAA Basketball in the U.S. and internationally earlier this month. That deal included both broadcast and streaming rights.

We have contacted FilmOn for further clarification and will update this post as we learn more.

At the very least, the equal content offering seems to be something that FilmOn is trying to exploit for its own marketing purposes: “We are going head to head with the industry’s top sports programmers,” the company’s outspoken founder Alki David boasts in the news release announcing the deal.

Frankfurt-based, UK/Beverly Hills-operated FilmOn has steadily been building up its catalog of premium sports content: earlier this year the company launched an international soccer channel with the UK Premiership and the Football Association, which will kick off (pun!) with football games from the Russian Premier League.

Last year, it came under some controversy when it was accused by the four major broadcasters in the U.S. of violating copyright by showing their programs. It was served at the time with a temporary restraining order. It then fought back against CBS and CNET with suits of its own (later dropped “put on hold” until November, David tells us.)

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UK-based FilmOn also claims that it has reached the number-one spot on the “European” Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) App Store with its free iPhone and iPad app. Recently it has additionally launched an HDi player, available as a free download on its site.

FilmOn says it has deals with some 120 content providers for its service, with Paramount, Associated Press and Bloomberg among the bigger names. Although it offers a fair whack of free content — including several terrestrial channels in the UK — it also has around 120 subscription and pay-per-view channels on offer.

No stats offered today on takeup of those services, although now that the company is listed we may start to see more transparent reporting on these details.

In July, FilmOn dropped a lawsuit it had filed against CBS’s tech site CNET, after finding only six examples of the content that it claimed CNET infringed by distributing Limewire file-sharing software. FilmOn founder Alki David says he is preparing a further action against CBS (NYSE: CBS), with which it has been sparring over unlicensed content since last year.

The initial market capitalization for FilmOn’s current listing is €43 million ($62 million). That’s a far cry from the €500 million valuation it had when it first listed in 2009. Between then and now the company has been personally funded by David, a producer, actor and musician.

The company says it will be buying back shares sold in 2009 from any investor, taking 10 percent interest paid on the price at which the stock was bought.

David had sued CBS and CNET, saying that CNET’s Download.com had facilitated the distribution of Limewire, a popular file-sharing program that was hit by an injunction last year. In May, Limewire and its creator, Mark Gorton, agreed to pay $105 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the major record labels against the service.

David, a producer, actor and musician, has a history of bad blood with CBS. His company, UK-based FilmOn, was sued by CBS and other major networks after he started broadcasting their programming over the internet without a license. Last November, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the company.

One month later, David lashed out at CBS in a YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) video, saying “we’re not going anywhere, we’re going to fight you,” and calling senior company executives including CBS CEO Les Moonves, “a bunch of hypocritical, thieving liars.”

In May, David made good on his threat and sued CBS, which dismissed the lawsuit, calling it “a desperate attempt to distract copyright holders like us from continuing our rightful claims.” Monday, David dropped the suit, as first reported by Wired.com.

But David isn’t done. In the court filling, David said he has been approached by “numerous artists and other copyright owners” about joining the lawsuit. As a result, the plaintiffs intend to “substantially expand and change the current suit” and “proceed on the basis of the amended suit instead of the current complaint.”

Alki David et al. vs. CBS, CNET –

Even six infringed works can amount to sizeable copyright damages, since awards can range up to $150,000 per infringed work. But if the judge is interested in seeing some evidence about the market for these works, it’s hard to imagine he’ll allow damage figures like that to ever be awarded. And of course, the plaintiffs might not win at all.

David has a history with CBS. His company, FilmOn, was sued by CBS and other major U.S. television networks after he started broadcasting TV over the open internet without a license. A federal judge quickly shut down FilmOn’s unauthorized broadcasts.

But David seems to have kept a grudge against CBS. He’s accused CBS of hypocrisy. David’s theory is that because CBS owns CNET-which was the main distributor of the Limewire file-sharing software-CBS has made a major contribution to online piracy. (Limewire’s software has now been banned and the service was shut down by a court injunction-but it was perfectly legal to use Limewire until last year, as long as the use didn’t break copyright law.) While he originally floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit against CBS, his current suit has several named plaintiffs but is not seeking class-action status.

CBS told Wired.com, which reported on this filing earlier today, that it is “confident that we will prevail” in the lawsuit. Lawyers for David didn’t return calls.

Limewire and its founder recently agreed to pay the major record labels a $105 million settlement to remedy the copyright infringement that Limewire was found to have illegally encouraged. The idea of piling on to Limewire while it was on the ropes legally isn’t actually a bad one, from a strictly economic viewpoint-the music publishers did it with some success, after all.

But with a list of one movie and five songs-and the movie isn’t exactly an Academy Award winner-David and his lawyers don’t have a lot to work with here.

Interestingly, several of the plaintiffs named in the complaint have no works listed at all, including De’Angelo Holmes, Anthony Round, Corey Johnson, and Jonathan Shinhoster. Those plaintiffs may have to drop off the case if they can’t produce valid copyright registrations (or pending copyright applications).

The full list of works follows. Only Fishtales is registered at the copyright office; the others have their registrations pending. (Not having a registration number yet doesn’t mean one can’t file a lawsuit.)

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»  Tipsy in Dis Club, a song by the same artists as Topless.

»  Sex Drive, a song by Dennis Round.

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What does CBS’ ownership of Download.com have to do with its dispute with FilmOn? On the face of it, not much. But since his lawsuit against the TV networks floundered, David has seemed particularly obsessed with CBS, which he has accused of being run by “thieving, hypocritical liars.”

A CBS spokeswoman responded to David’s suit by noting CBS’ win in the FilmOn case last year, and added: “This latest move by Mr. David is a desperate attempt to distract copyright holders like us from continuing our rightful claims. His lawsuit against CBS affiliates is riddled with inaccuracies, and we are confident that we will prevail, just as we did in the injunction hearing involving his company.”

Limewire, for those who don’t know, was one of the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing systems from about 2006 until it was shut down by court order late last year, after it was found liable for encouraging users to break copyright law. (Perhaps not coincidentally, a jury trial began yesterday which will determine how much money Limewire has to pay to record labels.)

Alki, who is an actor, has joined together with a group of artists, mainly R&B and hip hop musicians, to file this lawsuit against Limewire. But they didn’t stop there; they’re also suing CNET and its parent company CBS, saying that CNET’s Download.com site must bear some responsibility, as the main distributor of Limewire, a piece of software that was ruled illegal by a federal judge last year. According to Alki’s lawsuit, more than 220 million internet users acquired Limewire from Download.com, representing more than 95 percent of all copies of Limewire in use worldwide. CNET makes money from Download.com both through advertising and also by offering “Premium” accounts to some software publishers.

The idea of creating an artist-driven pile-on to Limewire might be effective; after all, publishing companies already did that and quickly scored a settlement. But dragging CBS and CNET into the Limewire mess just for distributing the software seems like a much higher hurdle. The thing is, peer-to-peer distribution is simply a very efficient method of moving data; and file-sharing software has many perfectly legal uses. Limewire only “became” illegal after a judge reviewed the evidence, and found that the company running Limewire had done a variety of things that actually encouraged users to break copyright laws. (The legal term here is “inducement.”)

Some of the points raised about CNET’s involvement in distributing Limewire:

»  The lawsuit at least implies that CNET had direct involvement in developing Limewire’s most copyright-infringing features. The lawsuit claims, without providing much detail, that “for each version of Limewire, for example, Download.com staff corresponded with the Limewire Defendants’ representatives regarding the features in the client program.” If CNET staffers were actually asking Limewire for features that had the specific purpose of making it easier to break copyright law, that could be a real problem; but if Alki and his lawyers have evidence like that, it isn’t in this complaint.

»  The lawsuit claims that CNET editors performed speed tests to see how effective Limewire’s software was, and downloaded copyrighted material as part of that speed test. The lawsuit describes a CNET video review this way: “As the viewer looks at the screen demonstrating a sample search, they see a list of copyrighted works, including those from several well-known musical artists. In the same video, Defendants admit that they downloaded files generated by these searches to test the speeds that Limewire could deliver for users.” But unless the downloads by CNET editors were files actually copyrighted by the plaintiffs in this suit, it’s hard to see how this matters much; remember, Limewire will already have to pay record labels as a result of the damages trial going on this week.

»  Other gripes are basically with how CNET handled editorial on the site. FOr example, it gave the Limewire software four and a half stars out of five; it continues to provide access to software like FrostWire, which one CNET user described as “practically indistinguishable” from LimeWire; and the CNET editor who wrote the Limewire review stated that peer-to-peer software “is primarily used for copyright infringement.” But complaints like this raise a free speech problem–CNET and other news outlets do need to be able to talk about software, even if it is illegal software.

Alki David, et al v. CBS Interactive, CNET, Lime Wire and Lime Group