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.)"

Comments

Re:PayPal donations go where?

[klund]

I know I'd donate. I value my rights enough to drop 50 bucks on it.

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:

EFF has asked a federal court to declare that Replay TV owners have the right to digitally record television programs, fast-forward through commercials, and send shows to other devices. In numerous press statements and legal filings, the entertainment industry claims that such recording for "time-shifting" and "space-shifting" purposes is a copyright infringement and that avoiding commercials is "theft" and "stealing". Five Replay TV owners have filed a Declaratory Judgment law suit against twenty-eight entertainment companies asking that their activity be ruled lawful fair use under copyright law.

Join EFF's fight to defend the consumers' right to digital VCR's.

And yes, the EFF takes PayPal.

Re:What grounds?

[gclef]

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.

Quick clarification/recap

[Erasmus Darwin]

The EFF summary fails to make it clear that we're talking about a feature the automatically and completely skips ads -- no user intervention required, no fast-forwarding shown on the screen. That's why it's just the ReplayTV 4000 that's receiving all the extra flak (versus Tivos, other ReplayTV units, and other PVRs). It's essentially commercial removal rather than commercial skipping.

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.)