v. To play media on a device other than the one on which it is stored. Also: space-shift, spaceshift.
2014
Perhaps the court is implying here that owners of legitimate copies are entitled (as a matter of fair use?) to reproduce those works and access them through some other mechanism. If that is what the court meant, that would be a big deal, because it would legitimize space shifting.
2013
According to the case files, Hotfile will not protest its liability for the infringements of its users, but it can claim that other files may have been "space shifted" by users.
1999 (earliest)
The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or "space-shift," those files that already reside on a user’s hard drive.
The more common practice is, of course, time-shifting: recording media to watch at a later time. The OED has an earliest citation from 1979, but I found the following ad in the October 25, 1977 edition of The Des Moines Register:
