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Regulators Lose Piracy Battle
asok_g33k writes "The US broadcast regulators were told today by a court of appeal that it 'crossed the line' in trying to dictate how devices functioned. This was after the regulators tried to ban a device which allowed TV shows to be pirated.
This comes after studies revealing that massive amounts of TV shows are beign illegaly downloaded from the internet and the regulators want a way to stop these shows being pirated and copied."
From TFA:
"Selling televisions is not what the FCC is in the business of."
Amazing they needed a three-judge panel to tell them that. It's obviously not over yet with the appeals court still yet to rule whether the consumer groups that brought the suit have standing, but it's a fantastic sign! Both for this decision as well as upcoming decisions on whether the government can force PC makers to implement DRM and "Trusted Computing" initiatives.
I'm a big tall mofo.
There is no way to stop
Sometimes, it is feasible to "invent" a DRM solution as if not all, but MOST users will obey it, and sometimes (in this case) it is not. What should be right or wrong, is a totally different question though.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
"massive amounts of TV shows are beign illegaly downloaded from the internet" .
Is this really illegal , I am not aware of any case in which someone has been prosecuted for downloading TV shows
IANAL , though wouldnt this classify as Potential copyright infringment, as it is yet to be tested in court.
Does anyone know if this is definantly illegal ?
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
How about a little truth: "Regulators tried to ban a device that would allow for personal copying
Well, this is true, but doesn't mean the other statement was false. It would have allowed pirating. In addition to legimate copying.
and went against a previous Supreme Court ruling (Sony vs Betamax).
The ruling was simply that the video recorder didn't break exisitng copyright laws. Not that it is illegal for a law to ban it.
Lets create "Meta Slashdot", a site where we solicit news items. We'll have some real editors that actually weed out the dupes and check the facts. Then we submit the news to Slashdot where Cowboy Neal can rubberstamp it.
With some luck we can even bribe Slashdot's ISP to reroute their mail to us, to make sure all submissions are properly vetted. :)
So, what do you say folks? Instead of this endles bitching about how the Slashdot editors suck, let's get together and do something about it!
/greger
Here in Australia they stick watermarks on every program now. Even funnier - if you're watching widescreen you can see the regular 4:3 station logo, then another one to the right of it, then another watermark with an HDTV logo. Then they stick flashing banners across the bottom telling you about this really great program coming up.
You know, watching a decent movie on free to air in this country it's like viewing the Mona Lisa on a web site. I don't bother any more, I just pick up boxed sets of old UK TV shows off ebay. Faves so far - 7 years of Minder and 54 episodes of The Professionals
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
But how is downloading television episodes illegal? They're on the tube for free, for heaven's sake! As long as the content is not for profit, I don't see where they have a leg to stand on.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
I'm betting that TOMORROW's DUPE of this story will turn out different.
title: Court Rules in Favor of US broadcast regulators
"The US broadcast regulators were told today by a court of appeal that it 'HAD NOT crossed the line' in trying to dictate how devices functioned. The court specifically gave the broadcast regulators the right to enter into anyone's abode and confiscate whatever they felt like. The regulatosrs followed up on their victory by announcing a COURT-BACKED plan to implant RFID devices into each and every citizen. The regulators have retained the firm of Claria Networks (formerly Gator), the creators of the pervasive and wonderful package GAIN to assist in the implementation.
In other news, US broadcast regulators delegated to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the right to conduct Random Strip Searches of whomever it feels like for no apparent reason."
Can I be a Slashdot editor if I promise never to come back?
/. could use people who don't even fucking read the blog they're in charge of.
It seems that
Why is it cool to post the same story 3 times in the same day, but a cook who grabs the crap from yesterday's garbage gets fired?
Most often heard from Slashdot editors wives, girlfriends, boyfriends or inflatable toys:
"This again?"
Seriously, take a moment from inspecting your own balls, and DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. Really.
Or go get fired from McFuckingClownBurger. This site is full of people who do more than you appear to do in the first 5 minutes of their 10 hour day. Is it too much to ask of the editors that they actually read, scan, or glance at the site enough to be called 'editors'?
A gas station toilet has a better story queue than you worthless bitches. Is it really TOO MUCH to READ SUMMARIES OF 12 stories? IS IT? If so, I suggest special ed tutoring. Perhaps you'll learn something from the fucking tards that can at least tell me if they've seen the goddamn puppy in the book before.
Why 'edit' this site at all if you're going to masturbate on donuts all day? Fuck, I can do that, and I don't even have a degree.
You know what really blows my teensy mind? That there was four hours between the time you posted your first story, and the time you posted the dupe from yesterday. What where you doing? Playing Minelayer? Eating samitches? Posting to Fark? Please tell me you do this for free, and that OSDN doesn't pay you to smell your fingers for hours on end.
Yeah, I amy be drunk, but I can still recognize a stupid dupe on the front page of the site I edit. Which is not this one. Which is probably why I'm not working there.
(Please note: I am not drunk this time)
Too bad this story didn't have a broadcast flag on it.
--
If Bush is against gay marriage, why does he keep talking about his mandate?
(Originally posted by teamhasnoi in Broadcast Flag in Trouble. Please don't sue me, teamhasnoi. It was a tribute. Yeah, that's it.)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I completely agree. I would much rather have the high quality, commercial free, logo free and scrolling text free as well as interuption free versions of a television show on a store bought DVD.
Not more then a month back, I was attempting to watch the new Battlestar Galactica and several times during the show the cable company had to put up a 'Weather Storm Watch Advisory' that destroyed the show. The white block text scrolled across the screen and the audio was switched to some overly loud voice proclaiming the national weather service has accounced a winter storm advisory for my area. This interrupted important dialog from the show for nearly 30 seconds and they did it at least 5 times durring the show.
I had it in my to see if I could locate an uninterupted version of the show on the Internet, but thankfully they always rebroadcast that particular show a few days later.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Here's a point I haven't seen, though I've not read all 100-gabillion replies...
Broadcasters put up shows for people to watch. They pay for it through advertising revenue. Advertisers pay for air time based on how many people watch it. The more people are watching, the more they pay and the more the broadcaster makes. That's what ratings are for. So...
If you download and watch the show, you are not watching it on broadcast which means you aren't counted in the ratings. The ratings for the show go down, the advertisers pay less, the broadcasters pay less. (this assumes the ratings industry is accurate...)
So.... here's the solution. Broadcasters package shows with the advertisements. Put the shows up for free download. Count how often its downloaded, apply a factor to determine how many people actually watch a downloaded show (like newspapers counting readers from borrowed copies) and include those numbers in the ratings. Ratings go up, advertising rates go up. all are happy. You'll still get a portion of the population that doesn't watch the ads, but I bet you'd discover that many people still would. Frankly, I wouldn't mind watching ads if I new it was part of the price for watching the show when I wanted... plus its nice to have the time to duck out to the kitchen or the can.
Or... even easier solution... Ratings industry is already in place, they simply have to make provision for counting those shows that are watched from download. simple.
The point is, it doesn't matter when a show is watched or on what media, just that the producers/broadcasters/advertisers know that its being watched and how often.
man, I feel like mold.
"The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable." Quoted from the FCC web site. The broadcast flag battle isn't about piracy anymore than the lawsuits against P2P filesharing systems are about piracy. Piracy is the excuse given to make these battles seem legitimate. Piracy, in all its forms, is already illegal and we have fine laws and law enforcement to battle piracy. The issue with the broadcast flag and P2P networks is control of consumer access to technology. The RIAA and MPAA want to prevent access to technologies that they don't like. If my daughter wants to watch her favorite show 4 times this month why should it be piracy for me to make a recording of that show for her? If I want to listen to 4 songs from one album and 3 songs from another one, why should it be piracy for me to rip those songs to CD/MP3 and listen to them in my car (bike, on a hike, etc)? The only reason is that the RIAA/MPAA wants to force us to buy multiple copies of everything we own. They are moving towards DRM that will tie a purchased recording to a single device and force us to buy it again to play it on another device. Ultimately, they want us to accept a pay-per-use model for literally everything they produce. This is their "holy grail" and they are eagerly pursuing that goal in the courts, in trade groups and in standard committees. The RIAA and MPAA should use existing laws to combat actual piracy and leave consumers alone in their own homes.
"copyright infringement" 1.610.000 pages
"copyright infringement" -piracy 1.480.000 pages
"copyright infringement case" 15.900
"copyright infringement case" -piracy 12.300
Exactly, that's what I am talking about.
I believe that it's common that people that want to talk about "copyright infringement" like to always say the word "piracy" because it aggravates the issue.
What I mean is that the word "piracy" attached to copyright infringement is used as a tool to make it look worse that it already is.
"Piracy", even in the copyright sense, means ripping of someone else, to say the least, and "copyright infringement" only means that at the worse.
The problem is that "piracy" is also used to describe DVD-ripping, and I don't understand how that can be described by a word used to describe for example airplane hijackers. Maybe that's the idea, you can make laws against copyright infringement, to stop "terrorists" that perform "piracy".
In the Middle Ages, a fellow named Gutenberg developed a new tech that had the church in an uproar. Know why? Indulgences. What is an Indulgence? Well, it is a piece of paper that is a "Get out of jail free" card for sin.
"Present this to St Peter and you will be without sin. uh that will be 3 farthings please", said the village priest.
Scribes composed it (they had scribal sweat-shops in the monasteries for this), a priest would "bless" it, then a poor peasant would pay a life's savings for it to insure paradise in his afterlife.
Along came Gutenberg's press and scribes were layed off right and left. Indulgences could be printed at a fraction of their earlier cost. For a while the Church made out like bandits. But then...Someone ELSE used a press to print them and suddenly Europe was flooded with Pirate indulgences... The Church declared unauthorized presses to be sinful and heavy penalties were imposed. Eventually Presses were everywhere and the Church lost control of a lucrative, and dishonorable scam. As you see, nothing new under the sun...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.