Multiple ReplayTV Lawsuits Dismissed

bluephone writes "News.com.com.com.com... has article about a federal judge dismissing lawsuits brought by 5 users and the EFF over fears of being sued by media corporations. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper stated the suits were moot since media companies agreed not to sue users in August 2003. She also pointed out that the suit brought by media companies against ReplayTV has been dismissed as well."

Comments

Yeah, sure.

[ActionPlant]

So what's to prevent those lawsuits from happening down the road over a slightly different issue?

Moot. Right. I never thought I'd hear that in our [lawsuit] trigger-happy society.

Damon,

Re:Yeah, sure.

[enrico_suave]

I guess it's "moot" because they (ReplayTV) removed the features in newer models of ReplayTV that scared the MPAA/etc...

i.e. IIRC ReplayTV jewer units no longer lets you get content from other replayTV costumers/units over the net. Please correct me if I'm mistaken about that. It *was* a very cool feature, it's a shame that it's not in the newer models.

FWIW (surprise) I'd rather build my own and have full control over what I can and can't do with my content -- until broadcast flags/other DRM creeps in further.

It's moot. But it will come back.

[Animats]

That's probably the correct decision. It's a case brought by owners of a dead product produced by a defunct company against a third party unlikely to sue them. But it will come back when low-cost PVRs that don't require a subscription service start appearing from China.

Re:It's moot. But it will come back.

[JamieF]

Oh yay. I can't wait for the day when my PVR channel guide is kept up to date by the same sort of company that prints documentation on a photocopier and deliberately omits their company name, contact info, and even product model number so you can't actually go to them for support. Excellent.

I've worked at a PVR company on channel guide functionality, and it's not easy. The amount of data for every single show broadcast on every head end in the US is actually fairly large, and obviously it gets updated a lot. I don't think that an open source approach to maintaining a feed of channel guide data will work until / unless PVRs get a LOT more market penetration. (The data becomes obsolete very quickly, and has to be constantly refreshed, unlike software that you just keep building on.) That's why, for the next few years, somebody is going to have to get paid to provide the channel guide info. That might be your cable or satellite provider, though. A good way to get free channel guide info might be to hack your cable or satellite box, or maybe to just create a gadget that reads it right off the cable TV signal.

Re:This just in...

[jonblaze]

Not quite. I haven't R'd the FA yet, but I'm betting the cases were dismissed because the plantiffs "Lacked Standing." That's a legal term for "nobody's done anything wrong to you, so get out of my courtroom."

I'll add another "not quite." Although mootness is sometimes thought of as the requirement that the plaintiff maintain standing throughtout the course of the litigation, mootness really goes to whether the court's resolution of the claim in the plaintiff's favor will provide effective relief. Because the copyright owners have entered into a covenant not to sue, a declaratory judgment in the plaintiffs' favor does nothing.

It's one of the more frustrating aspects of our legal system (to me, anyway) -- the inability to pre-emptively decide issues. Instead, you have to wait until you're actually *sued* for something, and then, if the plantiff drops the suit, you may have to go through it all again in the future the next time they decide to rattle your chain.

And another "not quite." In the criminal context, under Steffel v. Thompson, if there is no state prosecution pending against you, you may always seek a declaration in federal court that one would be unconstitutional if so brought. But, the plaintiff must demonstrate that there is a "genuine threat of enforcement." I'm pretty sure that declaratory judgments are also available in the civil context as the court did not question the propriety of declaratory relief but rather the procedural requirement of (lack of) mootness.

No real problem

[CelticWhisper]

OK, if I read right, the article stated that there were no grounds for the suit because the entertainment studios had pledged not to sue over commercial skipping and sharing, and have so far upheld their promise.

So it seems to me that no real harm has been done here, despite the knee-jerk reaction to view any EFF endeavours being shot down as a bad thing.

At least it's good to see that the studios have actually been behaving themselves. And honestly, is the commercial-skipping and file-sharing going to hurt them all that much? So far I get the impression that ReplayTV/TiVo/insert-DVR-of-choice-here is still something of a niche market. At least far more so than PCs, which are far more "dangerous" in terms of piracy, now are.

features restored

[mikeee]

The real question is, does this mean we get the commercial skip and internet transfer features enabled on the 5xxx (and/or any new) series boxes from Replay, and not just the older 4xxx like I have?

DVArchive?

[joeytsai]

If you own a ReplayTV, you know the killer feature for it is DVArchive. (sourceforge site)

However, I'm rather concerned about it. The website, although hosted on sourceforge offers no source code and repeated attempts to contact the author have been ignored. He's allegedly planning a rewrite of some kind, which is fine, I just want the source for the older version.

Is anyone a developer for DVArchive or have access to the source? This is not at all an insult to DVArchive or its developers, it's a great program, but in compliance of its license, I'd really like to see the source code.

Re:Fast Forward isn't illegal, just Auto Fast Forw

[TwistedSquare]

I have always thought that all that this debate surrounding skipping ads will just cause a change in the business model for TV ads. If people are going to skip the ads, I figure there are a few options - display them while the actual program is running (not popular, and can be disabled by image processing hardware), shift towards product placements (which has been happening the past few years), or start charging proper subscription to channels. The last option makes the most business sense, but that would force TV companies to make TV that people actively want to watch, a pretty tricky business. I wouldn't want to be a broadcaster at the moment.

Re:Fast Forward isn't illegal, just Auto Fast Forw

[Cyno]

The way I justify this is I think cable TV should be free as long as they want to advertise on it. If I'm paying for it they are stealing my time and should be forced to pay me for it. My time is far more expensive than the cost of cable TV.