Top Ten New Copyright Crimes

jeffy124 writes "In response to the Turner CEO's PVR ad-skips are theft comments, Yale's LawMeme has posted a short list of other new forms of theft and crime that will soon appear in our daily lives."

Comments

On justice:

[samoverton]

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest."

as Thrasymachus said,
"I declare justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger" - Republic 338c

Cable used to be commercial free

[peter hoffman]

I remember when cable TV (at least in my area) was commercial free. That was the main point of cable: free over-the-air TV needed commercials to pay for the programming but if you paid for cable then you had bought your way out of watching the commercials.

What we are faced with here (as always) is the golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules. The only solution I see (and it's not 100%) is to systematically vote against the incumbant in every election.

Because elected officials who have served mutliple terms have more influence than newly elected officials, the voters represented by new officials get less representation than other voters. This situation is inherently unfair and should be challenged somehow.

Paging Captain Obvious

[trollbot]

I'm sorry, but what the fuck do you *expect* these people to say? "PVRs are cool, ads are fucking lame"? You see, there's this little thing could 'business'. Yeah, sometimes it makes people into self-centred, self-righteous cunts that don't care about anything but themselves, but at the same time it creates jobs for average, working-class chumps like me and billions of other people around the world. It's nice to have this type of idealism, but you need to realise that there are far more important things in this world than being able to watch Voyager or browse pr0n without those pesky little ads everywhere.

content is the hook not the product

[Bart van der Ouderaa]

I get the notion that he has it backwards:

[Ad skips are] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots

Which is not true. There is content to hook people to watch the commercials. Broadcasters make money of the commercials so it's in their best interest to create the content needed to hook the the viewers to their station. Because they are in competition for viewers (who can choose which channel to watch and when) they better have good content (which also includes commercials!). At no time is there a contract between the viewer and the broadcaster for the broadcaster to deliver good content and the viewer to watch the commercials(like there is no contract between a viewer of a billboard and that billboard).

That some broadcasters choose to not use commercials but use a subscription system does not change this fact. The only thing a viewer does in this case is pay to be able to watch that channel.

For a Contract to exist I would have to have put a signature somewhere and there should be some place to view that contract.

Which day is it today?

[ichimunki]

It must be one of the "hate AOL/TW" days, since there are no new movie releases on DVD and no new .0001 milestone build of Mozilla, today is one of the days we sit back and castigate AOL/TW instead of fawning and drooling. :)