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DMCA Loophole For Peer-to-Peer TV Show Sharing?
An anonymous reader writes "Fortune.com asks, "Is TV Show Swapping Legal? For those using TiVos or new Windows PCs, it just might be." Why? "The law that ensnared ... DVD hackers, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, doesn't specifically address the question of [personal video recorders]. But when it comes to the legality of hacking digital media, the law zeroes in on 'circumvention' -- did hackers have to circumvent protection to copy the video? Several hackers who have published their techniques online say they didn't have to crack anything to extract video from their TiVos""
I have a ReplayTV. Love it! Can share my files directly off the Replay to the net (with some firewall rules). Not to mention software like DVArchive that "emulates" another replay on my network allowing me to dump the files from the replay to my fileserver and share them back again for later viewing.
The dingo ate my sig.
Actually, TiVo does have a 30 second skip feature. It is just not enabled by default and it is not well known how to enable it. See this link for details on how to enable it.
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Re:What's the big deal about show swapping? (Score:5)
... they don't know that I am watching TV at all let alone what channels at what time. they dont care... I'm not a nielsen family so my choices dont mean squat to them..
by glesga_kiss (596639) on Monday January 06, @02:28PM (#5027101)
I would tend to think that most people who watch recorded shows skip the commercials.
Even if the people watching the shows from a p2p download did watch the commercials, the network still wouldn't get paid for these viewings.
I have a revelation for you... they dont know that 99.997% of all viewers see them or are even watching the show. they dont know that your Tv is tuned to channel 4 from 3:30pm to 7:30 pm during the soft core porn afternoon.
the cable Tv companies do not YET collect the viewing demographics and sell them.. (I said YET.. it is coming!)
your point is moot
They get paid on the commercial UP front based on the viewers in that area.. if UHF-62 in your town has 20,000,000,000,000 viewers and has a high rating point number then they charge $$$$$$$ for that spot... even if ony 3 people watched that commercial and everyone else tuned out, they still got paid all that money for that airing.
NOBODY pays on how many people saw that show/commercial... they pay up front for X amount of subscribers at X rating for X daypart..
I'm inside TV advertising... I know this stuff.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.