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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.
"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
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
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.