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ReplayTV Users Sue Hollywood
Seth Schoen writes "A group of ReplayTV 4000 users, led by Craigslist creator Craig Newmark, today sued a group of entertainment companies to establish
that plaintiffs' use of the ReplayTV (including skipping
commercials) is not illegal. The defendants are the same entertainment companies which
have sued ReplayTV. Here the end users of the product
are getting involved to defend the legitimacy of their
activity in the face of allegations that skipping commercials is "theft". The plaintiffs are represented by Ira
Rothken and EFF. The case
is Newmark
v. Turner, in the Central District of California (at Los Angeles).
(Some people are calling it
Craig
v. Hollywood.)"
Well, seeing as how EFF is helping to bring the suit, just donate here
Paypal is amongst their many payment methods.
All things in moderation.
Users who have been called thieves by the entertainment industry should sue for libel.
Calling someone a thief is very serious. Under English law, and therefore under US law as well possibly, accusations of theft do not require the accusee to prove real damages - the accusation is damage enough.
Perhaps if the industry was punished for doing this they would stop using such emotional language in order to make their point seem more serious than it is.
I would think that the best destination for your donations would be an EFF membership. In fact, the EFF has already set up a Newmark v. Turner page:
And yes, the EFF takes PayPal.My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
It's possible to pre-emptively sue (at least in the US, which is where this is all occurring) to ask the courts decide if your actions are legal or not. The idea is to prevent the "chilling effect" of not knowing and being subject to the threat of a lawsuit based on actions that may in fact be legal.
If the courts don't think you have a case, or they think that there's no chilling effect occurring, they'll throw out your suit. If there is legitimate question as to the legality, and legitimate value in deciding early, they'll hear it.
Felten and the EFF tried this a while ago against the DMCA, but the courts dismissed it.
LawMeme has some analysis.
So we're talking about something that means that no matter how clever, relevant, and eye-catching an ad is, the user still won't stop and rewind to check it out since they didn't even receive the briefest of notification.
Anyway, this issue may or may not affect your opinion on the ReplayTV unit's acceptability, but it's worth keeping in mind as to why people are singling out this unit. (There's also the other controversial feature of built-in capability to share files, which the networks aren't happy about, either.)
And what about fastforwarding through the previews and commercials on videos and DVDs? Are they going to try and put anti-fast-forwarding technology in them?
Actually, yes. The DVD format supports the blocking of certain actions during certain segments of playback. I have seen examples of this in action with commercials on some rental DVDs, and it pisses me off. Sure as hell doesn't motivate me to buy the DVD later!
I will sometimes use VLC (VideoLAN) rather than by entertainment center DVD player and TV, to watch DVDs with annoying ads, promos, previews, warnings, etc. that cannot be skipped. VLC doesn't understand menus at all -- it just plays the movie. WHICH IS HOW THE GOD DAMMNED THING SHOULD WORK ANYWAY.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
You can order from this company Techtronics. They have mod chips and kits that give you the ability to skip FBI Warnings, change regions, and remove macrovision. They have a nice kit for my Pioneer 525 here, but it's too expensive for the little use it would get for me.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Infinitely cooler to me is that fact that one co-plaintiff is none other than Glenn Fleishman, author of the Furioso Font, recognizable to "Prisoner" fans everywhere as a clone of the "Albertus" font used in the classic TV show.
Ever notice that movies have FBI warnings at the beginning? Those warnings are a big clue that we're not supposed to copy movies and send them around. TV lacks these warnings, though. We have no reason to believe that there's anything illegal about capturing a show with Replay, for example, and sending it over a network to another user. You'd think at the very least they'd explicitly deny that, but they don't. They don't deny *anything* with TV.
It is for this reason that I am extremely unhappy with the statement that the CEO Turner made about 'implied contracts'. It almost feels like entrapment. "We'll bombard ppl with commercials until they develop technology to circumvent them, then we'll sue them, then we can exercise even MORE power to cram more ads in there." Yah, I know that sounds ridiculous. I'm just expressing how this whole thing strikes me.
"Derp de derp."
Unfortunately a contract can be made without signing a bit of paper. That is not the definition of a contract.
A contract can be made by word of mouth, by the shaking of a hand....
David
1. The latest ReplayTV (4000+) has a Commercial Skip feature. This isn't a 30-second skip button, this is a "hit this button and we will automatically skip every commercial" button.
2. TiVo does have a 30-second skip button, it just isn't enabled by default. See the TiVo FAQ for more info.
3. The 3 major networks (NBC, CBS and ABC/Disney) and TV/Movie content providers such as AOL/Time Warner are investors in TiVo. You don't usually go around suing people you have already given large amounts of money to.