Indiana-based streamer hit with copyright lawsuit

Major television entertainment providers Dish Network and Sling TV have accused an independent Indianapolis broadcast company of illegally streaming copyrighted channels.

Filed in the Nevada federal district court, Dish and Sling’s complaint alleges that Communication Unites Everyone Inc., the parent company of CUE Broadcast, has been pirating content, including free pay-per-view events and live sports.

The case had been sealed for months, but at the end of June, a federal judge opened the case publicly and granted a temporary restraining order, halting CUE’s operations and authorizing the U.S. Marshals Service to retrieve evidence from a CUE “data center” in North Las Vegas, Nevada.

CUE’s chief executive, David Weddell, has denied any unlawful activity, asserting in a recent court filing that CUE operates under a legitimate business model and has agreements with various cable companies and other content providers to livestream programs.

Dish and Sling claimed in their previously sealed May 28 complaint that an investigator found CUE had unlawfully streamed at least 23 of the providers’ channels, to which CUE’s attorneys argued that such a small percentage of the more than 1,000 channels CUE offers should not have constituted a sweeping restraining order.

Nevada District Court Judge Gloria Navarro agreed with CUE.

Last week, Navarro converted the restraining order into a permanent injunction for the retransmission of the 23 channels at issue. But the judge allowed CUE to broadcast the remaining batch.

“WE WON,” Marc Randazza said in a text message after the injunction was ordered. He’s the managing partner of Randazza Legal Group PLLC and an attorney representing CUE.

“We still think that the statute is not met, and this is beyond what the court should have done. But at the same time, when there were 1,000 channels suppressed by an overzealous and underhanded temporary restraining order, and now the injunction is limited to 23 channels, that is a huge win that we are very proud of,” Randazza added.

Attorneys for Dish and Sling did not respond to The Lawyer’s email requesting an interview.

What is CUE?

Communication Unites Everyone LLC was registered as a domestic for-profit corporation in Indiana on June 24, 2020, with Weddell listed as the registered agent. But it was voluntarily dissolved on Sept. 4, 2025.

Communication Unites Everyone Inc. was then registered on Oct. 6, 2022, with Jamar Cobb-Dennard listed as the registered agent.

Speaking during a company leadership and affiliates teleconference, Weddell said the company officially launched in 2023.

Weddell said in a declaration filed with the Nevada court that CUE has grown its revenue from $3.7 million in 2023 to $9.02 million in 2025 — a nearly 150% increase.

(Dish and Sling have questioned Weddell’s characterization of the company’s assets, noting that CUE’s bank accounts totaled about $1,834.95, according to a list of assets acquired following the temporary restraining order.)

Advertising itself as a “New Era In Streaming,” CUE currently offers consumers two streaming packages of more than 1,000 channels: the “New Era” package is $69.99 per month, and the “Freedom Founder” package is $769.89 per year.

Unlike Dish, CUE is not a satellite TV provider. CUE is not a cable TV provider, either.

According to the declaration — filed by Weddell — CUE is a privately owned Internet Protocol Television company, meaning it streams television channels over the internet.

Weddell said in his declaration that CUE owns and operates many of its own channels, including political shows such as “Untamed,” “Patriot Party News” and “The Robert Scott Bell Show;” religious shows such as “Watchmen Action Network,” “Bible & Beef” and “Blessed2Teach Industries;” and drug addiction awareness shows, such as “Fentanyl Fathers,” “Victoria’s Voice” and “Angel Army.”

CUE also hosts many traditional channels, including AMC, Discovery Channel, Fox and HBO, according to CUE’s website.

Weddell said the company works by sending a “Real-Time Messaging Protocol” link to its “content partners,” which then upload content onto CUE’s television platform.

“Using this link, our content partners can show pre-recorded shows or show live content,” Weddell said. “This is a standard system utilized by platforms such as YouTube, Twitter/X, Facebook Live, and SnapChat.”

Weddell also said CUE has agreements with various cable companies that provide it with content from live streams to television shows to traditional programming.

The content partners then send CUE the streams, which are received in a North Las Vegas data center, Weddell said.

Attorney Randazza explained that CUE essentially pays upstream providers on a per-view basis.

“For example, the Arizona News Network that we have on there, if nobody watches it, they don’t get paid,” Randazza said. “But if 1,000 people watch it, we pay them a fee for every person who watches it.”

Dish and Sling say the operation is a trafficking scheme in violation of federal copyright infringement laws.

“The defendants just, quite frankly, have not provided any license to any of the content that we’re talking about here,” said Stephen Ferguson, a Houston attorney representing Dish and Sling, during a July 13 proceeding.

Dish and Sling allege that CUE may be getting content from other providers, but those providers may have pirated it.

“You just can’t take content from someone that doesn’t have rights, pay them, and then be justified in distributing that content,” Ferguson said.

Weddell and the company have maintained that CUE’s operation is a “legitimate business model.”

The sweeping TRO

Before filing their complaint under seal in May, Dish and Sling sent Weddell a cease-and-desist letter on Feb. 25, requesting CUE stop selling, operating, participating in or supporting its retransmission of copyrighted content, court records state. Dish and Sling said neither Weddell nor CUE responded.

Weddell asserts he never received the letter, either by email or physical mail.

One letter was sent to the company’s Indiana-registered address at 9165 Otis Ave., Suite 119, Indianapolis, Dish said.

According to Weddell’s declaration, the northeast Indianapolis address was CUE’s former chief financial officer’s address, who Weddell said left the company on Feb. 18 — a week before Dish and Sling sent the cease-and-desist letter.

A building manager for the office suites at 9165 Otis Ave. told The Indiana Lawyer last week she had never heard of CUE or Weddell.

The building manager also said the office has no suite 119. That address is also listed as the company’s principal office address on In Biz, the state’s business registry.

According to Dish and Sling’s complaint, an investigator for the companies visited CUE’s data center in North Las Vegas and was given a tour of the server room, where he or she saw 14 racks of servers tagged with CUE branding.

The investigator also bought a one-year subscription to CUE Broadcast and discovered Sling’s transmissions were the source of at least 23 channels that CUE distributed to its users, the complaint states.

At the end of June, Judge Navarro granted an ex parte temporary restraining order, enjoining CUE from operating its websites entirely, ordering an asset freeze of the company and Weddell’s funds and authorizing the U.S. Marshals Service to gather and preserve evidence from the North Las Vegas data center.

Marshals spokesperson Abigail Meyer said it doesn’t appear that the marshals gathered evidence for the case in Indiana, where the company is registered.

In justifying the emergency and concealed restraining order, Navarro determined that there was a real risk that CUE would destroy or hide evidence if it were given advance notice of the case.

Navarro made that conclusion because of past cases involving pay-television pirates and because of Weddell’s extensive criminal record of 18 felony convictions — including tampering with records, forgery, theft by deception, grand theft, exploitation of the elderly and a history of violating court orders, Navarro wrote in granting the temporary restraining order.

“Moreover, in the prior criminal proceedings against him, Weddell was found to have violated the terms of probation on at least two instances and failed to appear in court, resulting in a bench warrant for his arrest,” Navarro wrote.

Randazza called the ex parte order a “slimy thing to do.”

Dish and Sling “did it so that they could calculate that my client wouldn’t have the ability to defend himself,” he said.

Randazza considered Dish and Sling’s evidence to support the restraining order “thin” and said he does not believe it was enough to justify shutting down the whole business for weeks.

“When you get a restraining order like this, you’re supposed to use a very accurate rifle, and here, instead, what they did was just throw a box of hand grenades into the whole room,” Randazza told The Indiana Lawyer.

Randazza acknowledged Weddell’s criminal history but said that does not mean his client committed a crime in this case.

Weddell’s “past had nothing to do with this kind of thing,” Randazza said.

According to Weddell’s declaration, after the restraining order went into effect, CUE lost nearly 1,500 subscribers between July 3 and July 9.

“DISH and Sling timed the shutdown of CUE’s business to hit on a holiday weekend, both to make it more difficult for CUE to find counsel and respond to its injunction in a timely manner and to ensure that CUE would be unable to air its ‘Once in a Lifetime’ event celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States,” Weddell said. “Many customers cited their inability to watch this special Independence Day programming in their decision to leave.”

Randazza also said the restraining order and asset freeze made it more difficult for CUE to investigate and prepare its case.

“They treated us as if we were drug traffickers or, you know, terrorists, and everything got shut down,” Randazza said.

A turn of the tide

On July 15, a couple of days after a nearly hourlong hearing in which Randazza laid out CUE’s rising financial concerns, Navarro converted the temporary restraining order into a much narrower injunction than the one originally requested by Dish and Sling. Instead of enjoining all of CUE’s broadcast transmissions, Navarro only prevented CUE from transmitting the 23 channels that Dish and Sling’s investigator identified as likely infringements.

Randazza told The Indiana Lawyer in a text message last Friday that CUE was back online.

Although she permitted CUE to continue operating again — though with a slightly smaller channel roster — Navarro kept the asset freeze in place, again citing Weddell’s criminal history.•