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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."
Small consumers powerless against large corporations. Film at 11.
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trust them that they will follow what they say. I can remember just not to long ago the US Treasury going back on its word. So I fully embrace this because I trust Big Corporate America.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
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,
http://actionPlant.com
...were the moots suited?
logical attempt at humor here, come on now, its early...
dismissed ... dismissed .. dismissed
....
:)
Replay
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Error 404: WMD Not Found
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.
Paper gets watermarked all the time. I've never heard of any issues with it. As far as I know, it is just another form of branding, the same as having the word "Coke" on the outside of a can of Coca-Cola, or "Acme" stamped onto the base of an anvil. Please enlighten me about the evils of watermarking paper.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I only believe FOX news, because they are fair and balanced.
1. Hollywood firms equate skipping commercials to stealing TV 2. Sue Sonic Blue into Bankrupcy 3. Sonic Blue is forced to sell of the business unit 4. New company disables the features 5. Hollywood drops suit so they can use the same tatic against the next firm that dares give consumers fair use rights over content they have paid for. 6. .... (Any Manufactures in China want to step up? )
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.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
That, coming from somebody on h tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org?
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?
Aren't their some VCRs (or other VTRs) that had built in commercial skipping?
Did I miss lawsuits over that back in the day, or did no one care during the heyday of VTRs?
I'll post a reply once I find an example, but perhaps someone can back me up on this.
All new Replay units still have the commercial skip functionality. The only difference is that a very tiny bit of user input is now required to access the feature.
The old version used to work auto-magically skipping all the commercials with no user input.
The new version does exactly the same thing, only it requires the user to push a button at the start of every commercial break. Not every commercial mind you, just every 2 to 5+ minute commercial segment. And just one button...
But that one button is enough to make it the previously-automagic feature a "manual" function. And I suppose no one in the entertainment industry thinks such a feature is worth litigating. After all, it's really nothing more than a FFF (fantastic fast forward). Remember, Replay units never deleted commercials, they just made insert points and skipped them in the video stream, you could always go back and watch them if you liked.
Since the new version is little more than a manual FFF, I gather the entertainment industry would have very hard time trying to prove in court that the all-too-similar Fast Forward on VCR's has been illegal all this time.
TiVo has 30-second skip as well, though it's an "easter egg" that requires a sequence of button pushes that isn't in the official docs anywhere. It also disables itself whenever the unit upgrades its OS. Mine did this last week but the 30-sec skip re-enabled with no trouble (once I punched it in right, anyway!).
...
According to at least one TV exec, I'm stealing by doing this because I don't see their ads
i am a soviet space shuttle
I think the OP meant that SonicBlue, which made replay when they had commerical skip and internet program sharing, no longer exists. They were the company being sued originally. RePlay was bought by Digital Networks North America (owned by the owners of Denon and Marantz) who now provide the RePlay service. While I guess DNNA would still be liable since they bought RePlay, the fact that they dropped commercial skip and internet sharing probably in the new models makes the issue matter less.
I have blog like everyone else
I have a Replay 55xx and the new "manual commercial advance" (called Show|Nav) is not quite the same thing as CA (commercial advance, for 50xx). For once thing, for broadcast shows, it never gets the segments right, and skipping forward often skips to the start of the next commercial break! Now, I've not tried a 50xx unit with CA with the same sort of shows, but if the feature worked like this, I don't think Hollywood would mind.
The 55xx are physically the same as the 50xx models, except the 50xx models had CA and IVS (Internet Video Sharing), which is what spawned this lawsuit.
DNNA (the successor to SonicBlue) has not announced that they'll re-enabled CA and IVS on 55xx units. But, since they disabled the feature voluntarily (after buying SonicBlue), I suppose they could.
if the agreement not to sue is legally binding? And if so, what is this agreement with respect to? (i.e. they will not sue at all, or they will not sue users who exploited one particular avenue of transferring media, or they won't sue if one of their lawyers has indigestion?)
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
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.
http://www.talknerdy.org
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.
Actually, this had nothing to do with the 30 second QuickSkip, but with ReplayTV's "Commercial Advance" feature that automatically "sensed" commercial breaks, encoded that data along with the recorded show, and then let the viewer optionally "elimintate" (in theory) all commercial breaks. The networks didn't seem too upset that you could skip blocks of time or fast forward--people still sometimes view commercials and even forget to skip. It's the non-interactive, automatic Commercial Advance feature that they were up in arms about.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
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.
I lose more karma to moderators abusing their power. They stop, I stop.
"Derp de derp."
They're not just stealing from you in obvious ways, it's the non-obvious ones that are more insidious.
It's irritating that they're removing stuff we want to see (show content) and putting in more ads (crap). The average amount of time spent on actual show has gone down and the number of ads has gone up.
Aren't they stealing from us, their customers, by doing this? And aren't they stomping on the "works" created by "content creators" -- namely, the directors and cast members and crew? Where's the lawsuits and screaming about that?
i am a soviet space shuttle
No it's not, and no I won't. All this criticism, yet nobody's asking me any questions like 'why'.
"Derp de derp."
TiVo has 30-second skip as well
Yes, ReplayTV has time-based FWD and REV buttons, but this is a seperate function that intelligently skips forward past entire blocks of commercials until it finds the beginning of the next show segment.
Sometimes it works very well, sometimes it just skips until a station identifier. But it usually beats the fixed-time skip button.
I have one of the older ReplayTVs that has the auto (ie, no button) skip feature as well, so it's nice to be able to choose from three ways to avoid adverts without jumping through obscure remote control ritual magic hoops like on the Tivo.
Da Blog
On the other hand, TiVo has never sold boxes that were labeled as including service and then gone and deactivated boxes that were legally bought with the understanding that they included service...
Though even before all that, I knew I wanted a TiVo, commercial skip or not, based on personal experience with both boxes. Some models of ReplayTV don't work too well with closed captioning, for example, and the captions vanish until the box is hard-rebooted, for example. And I liked TiVo more overall, including its interface.
Do ReplayTVs run on Linux? I know that's way off topic, but I'm curious.
i am a soviet space shuttle
"We don't need to know "why" to know it's abuse."
Yes, you do, considering that the metamod instructions say "The metamoderator decides if the moderator's rating was fair, unfair, or neither." So yeah, you have to know why I would metamod every negative post down before knowing if I'm abusing anything. Until you know, you are in no position to judge.
This is the last I am saying on the topic. If you'd like me to respond to anything you have to say, then log in. Risk your karma as I'm risking mine. If you're unwilling to do that, then I guess you just plain don't feel so strongly about it.
"Derp de derp."
"I don't agree with meta-moderating all unfair posts down, but I do agree that the only way meta moderation will be fixed is by breaking it in the first place"
I think abusive moderatorship would drop significantly if we can see who mods who for what.
I think AC's right, though, it ain't going to happen unless meta-moderation is demonstratably underpowered.
We already have a branch of government to make it.
Even if the supreme court gets to re-write our constitution, it doesn't mean it's right.
yay! someone that could explain that better than myself.
thats exactly the kind i was talking about though, as the commercials are typically driven and higher levels than normal broadcasts. I believe thats what made this possible. RCA did this as well.
If I cover my ears & eyes for 30 seconds while commercials are on, is it considered stealing?
Yes, well, you know, I'm sure it is, because apparently they have to make a "special exception" for taking a bathroom break. (I know... insane.)
i am a soviet space shuttle