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Five PVR Users Allowed To Join Replay Court Fight
hachete writes with this snippet from the Mercury News: " 'A federal judge in Los Angeles agreed to allow consumers to join the legal battle between Hollywood and the makers of the ReplayTV 4000 digital video recorder to defend their uses of the device.'" The five customers chosen to add some insight include craigslist founder Craig Newmark.
Finally, some GOOD news.
Finally, a judge wakes up and realizes 'hey, maybe the people who will be affected by this decision should have a voice in it'.
:)
Every time I consider fleeing this country in terror, something like this happens that makes me reconsider.
Plus, it probably has the *AA foaming at the mouth, which is always a good thing.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
u have my poop there
i think it still belongs to me. Do not confuse taking a poop with leaving a poop. take it or leave it.
thank you
This is how to get your point across in these matters. Good for the judge.
/.er tried to have a meeting with his or her senator about the DMCA, DRM or any other topic, we could really change things.
You (yes you) can try to meet with your lawmakers (or their advisors) and discuss issues. Not everyone can meet with someone, but it's worth a try. If every
Write a letter. Now.
-twb
It is good that some consumers are in court ... when they lose they can go to gaol as well. Bloody thieves!
Slashdot only allows a user with your karma to post 2 times per day. You've already shared your thoughts with us that many times. Take a breather, and come back and see us in 24 hours or so.
If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@slashdot.org with your username "SweetAndSourJesus". Let us know how many comments you think you've posted in the last 24 hours.
Guess it's time to get high, then.
Finally, a few viewers of Replay TV have the opportunity to tell Hollywood where to put their commercials!
This sig no verb.
If as a result of pvrs, nobody watches commercials anymore and the bottom falls out of the broadcasting industry, what do you propose to do with the countless people who were employed by said industry and now are jobless with mouths to feed? Do you really want to see the broadcasting industry go into the shitter? Having your freedoms is one thing, but destroying somebody's livelihood is another.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
(a) a legal batter
OR
(b) sex with a mare?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently only consumers on the suit will answer those questions. Transferring a show to your laptop is fair use. How is skipping commercials fair use?
Calling that fair use grants the point that not watching commercials is a theft that is only "legally permissible" if there's a kid in the room. Going to get more chips during an ad is obviously now theft. If it's only okay if you've got a kid handy, but then you should send the kid to the kitchen and watch the damn ads yourself. That satisfies everyone, according to the judge: the sponsors are seen, you get your food and the innocent little child is protected from the commercials in a legally permissible way.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Cars allow people to run over and kill innocent children. Kitchen knives can be used to cut, torture, and kill innocent children. Rocks can be used to bash in the skulls of innocent children.
Video recorders can be used to make (shitty) copies of movies which can then be distributed on the Internet and viewed by innocent children.
Box knives can be used to hijack airliners, which can in turn be used to kill innocent children.
And of course a ReplayTV unit can be used to record porno flics from TV which can then be sent to innocent children for viewing.
We should outlaw anything that can be used for any sort of illegal purpose. It's simple, really.
The ratio of men to women in the personals in craigslist was 10:1. Now, it's going to be 100:1 with the slashdot effect. I might have to meet women in person now.
How is skipping commercials any different than switching to another channel and watching a TV show there? You are still not watching the commercial.
How about a law saying you can't change channels during a show. Or am I the only one who switches channels during commercials
"The ruling was a reversal from last week's tentative order, in which Cooper wrote that the case would likely resolve ``many, if not all'' of the issues consumers raise -- without their direct output."
She must have realised her Betazoid powers were waning and needed "Output" from actual humaniods.
Dammit, when will these judges realise that we don't have time to tell them what we think.
That's why we elect/appoint them, so we don't have to think for ourselves.
First, get a sharp knife or razor blade.
Next, slice your cock off at the base.
Finally, place your cock in your mouth and suck it.
Enjoy!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
HBO has as good programming as anybody else, and no disruptive commercials. We're already paying for $40-$50 or more per month, so it's not like advertising is the only income stream. I'd rather have a few good channels than hundreds of crappy ones anyways.
The other night my housemate and I were wondering, "Is there anything we see advertised on the shows we watch that we actually buy?" At first we couldn't think of anything. Eventually an ad came on for a brand of gasoline I sometimes pump. There are certainly some brands of stuff I don't buy because I'd never want to be associated with the advertising. Has there been any research on the negatives of showing commercials to the sorts of folks who are greatly annoyed by most of them?
But if you really want me to watch commercials as a condition of receiving television - which I don't consider totally a bum deal since I don't watch much television and have never subscribed to cable - then use technology to allow me to see commercials that are about stuff I might have an actual interest in buying. This should be done in a way that can't trace back to me as an individual. I would gladly watch commercials for, say, portable mp3 players - but showing me commercials for cars is just dumb, since I won't be buying a new car in the next 5 years, and you can't tell or show me enough about a car in a minute to interest me anyway.
And please don't show me ads for prescription drugs. The last thing I want to do is justify the further inflation of medical costs to pay for these ads; and I really don't want to think about other people's diseases when I'm trying to relax into some escapist TV - or even focus on the nightly news, for that matter. I mean, old people are depressed, need diapers, and the males can't get it up without help ... but do I need to meditate on my still-years-off future decay every time I want to luxuriate in the fires and floods besetting distant parts of our greenhoused world?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'm one of the defendants -- why doesn't anyone ever say the suit includes regular Slashdot reader Glenn Fleishman? cuz Craig is arguably much cooler than I. One large part of my involvement in the suit is that I don't believe that any company nor the government should be allowed to outlaw devices or uses or media formats before or after the fact because there simply might be some ways in which that technology could infringe on copyright.
Copyright is held in the public interest -- it's part of the public good as a means to ensure the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Fair use is a tool to allow individuals to have reasonable access and use of materials they license or buy from copyright holders. With the expansion of copyright law, there's no connection any more between the notion of copyright as a limited grant by the people of the United States (and other countries, too, of course) and the utility to which that copyright can be put to use.
I'm an author as well as a defendent in this case, and I support copyright as a method by which words, images, and motion can be protected for a limited time to allow the artists, writers, and other creators to make a living. If other modalities arise in which I would copyright nothing but still be able to pay the bills, I would certainly be interested in that as would most authors I know.
The point is this: I don't ask Xerox and Canon to stop selling copy machines because they might photocopy articles that appear in magazines. I don't ask ISPs to filter all content because my words might pass through without payment. I don't require my readers to peruse advertisements and read my articles in one sitting. (You can make the case that one useful item built into new color copiers is their ability to recognize when currency is being photocopied and prevent it -- that has compelling public and private interest all over it, even though it prevents certain kinds of art.)
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
--great analogy here -->What's next? Ripping ads out of magazines so you don't have to see them
while reading going to be the next thing that's illegal?
--I was thinking that meself. Their lawyer in this suit should do exactly that. Walk up in front of the court and judge, show them a magazine that he bought, it's now his property. Tear out an ad, crumple it up, throw it away. fold open to a page of an article he likes, make 3 copies, hand them to his friends to read. Let his kid cut out some pictures to paste into a school report. Show the jury how it's "the same thing".
This is all stuff most everyone has done, no one has any problems with it, and there's NO DIFFERENCE with doing the same with digitzed media of any sort. Any jury would find for the plaintiffs in this case, if a similar plan was followed-maybe anyway.
I thought they were testing the TV version of popup ads. Its gonna end up like Headline News where 1/3 of the screen is news and the rest is info. the info her being ads of coirse
Some advertisers already have caught onto the fact they need to change their advertising strategy by adding product placements to shows. Take a look at that wacky American Idol on FOX TV - they have product placement with Coke and Ford. Luckily I can TiVO through the Ford things. Can't quite FF through the show with coke overlays logos and judging with Coke cups on the table. Funny thing I only tuned in after I read an article about type of product advertising they were doing.The phone in thing seemed a little suspect.
"Fair Use" is a specific legal concept that we're probably hurting ourselves by misusing all the time like this. It is unlikely that skipping commercials is "Fair Use". Wrong problem, wrong concept, wrong argument.
... or TV at all? (Are they specially immune because they are executives?) As a democratic republic, can we seriously believe this argument has the slighest basis in law when every television watcher and voter does not agree with it? Isn't that where the law ultimately derives from, not the means-are-ends fantasy-land interpretations of the law promulgated by Big Copyright?
The real question is, since when are we obligated? I'll leave the sentence fragment like that, because it makes more sense then specifying the obligations. Exactly at which point did we become obligated to watch commercials? Where are these obligations stated? How did we agree to these obligations? Who the hell seriously believes in these obligations? What legal basis do these obligations have?
Are we equally obligated to watch every single commercial that comes into our home? Are we obligated to watch the same damn Burger King commercial all 4000 times it is on a day? (One could interpret it that way.) What if we only watch part of a show? What if we only watch two minutes of the show, then leave? Are we obligated to watch some commercials later?
Are we all going to be in deep legal poo-poo for retroactive penalties for not watching commercials? Can the judge rule in favor of the obligation theory when he or she has almost certainly not behaved that way themselves? Do the executives making these insane claims themselves watch commercials?
Fair use is a phrase best left unused by Slashdotters, as most of them get it wrong. The real questions in this case are trivialized by using the fair use concept. (Look it up.)
The purpose of television is the advertising. If there was no advertising, there would be no commercial need for TV in the US, not even PBS.
American Corporations depends upon broadcast television to market their product and brand their trade and service marks. TV has been very kind to the U.S. corporation, allowing mega corporations such as McDonalds, WalMart, and Coca Cola to create a unified vision of their corporation in the public mind, one that often has little to do with reality. Broadcast television has, in effect, given the corporation a means to brainwash entire generations.
To the U.S. Corporation an end of television commercials means an end of a powerful marketing technique. If McDonalds is not allowed to brainwash the kids to annoy their parent for a Kids' Meal, what is to stop the consumer from just going to the restaurant next door, or, god forbid, actually cook a nutritious meal? If WalMart is not allowed to push the fallacy that they provide the best value, what is to stop the consumer from going to a store where the workers are actually paid for the hours worked? If Coca-Cola did not constantly equate itself with the American Way, would there be any reason for us not buy Shasta?
Some may think I am exaggerating, but I am not. TV has been critical in the evolution of the American Corporation and the mass adoption of new products. For instance, when instant coffee first came out, it was not widely accepted. Most women at the time were homemakers, and making real coffee for their husbands was considered part of their duty. Instant Coffee producers launched a large scale campaign to equate instant coffee to loving one's husband, by way of having more time to be with him. We see the same thing in recent paper plate commercial aimed at the single mom. By using paper plates, the single mom has more time to spend with her kids, and therefore only a mom who did not love her kids would not use paper plates. Every few minutes on kids' shows, McDonalds equates going to their restaurants with loving your kids.
So, now perhaps we can stop all this silly talk about the quality of TV, or that maybe we can just start paying for TV. The sole purpose of a television program is to deliver a large number of a certain demographic to an advertiser. Nothing less, nothing more. Advertisers know how important this is, and will often pay inflated prices to insure their influences. This is particularly true for certain groups such as young men. This, by the way, explains why male professional sports do so well.. Such sports are also a vehicle to deliver a demographic to the advertiser. The value of such entertainment to us as consumers is far less than the value to the advertiser. We would unlikely to be willing to directly pay that kind of money.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Or $1.20 per hour of commercials (not the show) that the station gets paid by the advertisers for each viewer. My time is worth more than 2 cents a minute: I'm willing to pay that penny for each commercial I don't have to watch. The TV industry will have to learn to adapt, rather than force me to watch dreck for pennies. This essay by Brad Templeton (of the EFF) covers some possible business models TV could take.
You are absolutely right. Anything is lethal. I'm not even going to make the joke about resting in peas.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Now. . .digital cable. Whole new signal-processing infrastructure, new set-top boxes. Amplifiers will need to amplify AND regenerate the signal: digital signals tend to go to much over a given distance without active regeneration. Hence, the 185M Cat5 limit, or the chain of 5 devices rule when laying out network wiring/infrastructure. Lots of new stuff. Operating cost will likely be less, but have you forgotten about implementation costs ???
I was going to build a site once, when bandwidth was cheap, I had a lot more free time, and I was much dumber. TVonDVD.com. Even had a little spinning logo worked up, of an old fashioned tv on a cd.
But the domain was taken, and I quit the job for better pay with a higher workload.
Oh well
Yay me!