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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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Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
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
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.
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.
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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?
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
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.