Slashdot Mirror
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."
what is this a competition ?
yesterday
This article appeared yesterday.
And the day before yesterday.
Tomorrow, I intend to hold an opinion, so if you could post it then too, that'd be great.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Can we expect each of them to repost this? It's important stuff though. We need to hear it again and again.
I just think i had a flashback.. Or its just such a good story that every editor wants to post it..
5 46244&tid=129&tid=17 1 33250&tid=123&tid=129
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/23/1
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/22/2
Tried to mail the editors, but apparently they dont check their email
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.
It's not the first time and it won't be the last time that retailers had to follow pirates into a distribution model.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
samzenpus changes his name to dupesTacosPosts here
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
Maybe if /. had a broadcast flag, it would be able to recognize stories which had been broadcast and avoid copying them?
Ok, a bit lame, but I'm having a hard time trying to come up with anything which wasn't posted the first two times...
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
How about a little truth: "Regulators tried to ban a device that would allow for personal copying, and went against a previous Supreme Court ruling (Sony vs Betamax)."
There once was a time when I respected Slashdot for it's common-sense + Left'ish wing viewpoints. Now it looks like nothing more then an elementary school whine-fest. Poor spelling, grammer and an uncanny nack for re-posting stuff other peoples' work.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I paid $5.00 to see 1,000 dupes before everyone else. It seems the only added value subscribers have now-a-days is to be the first ones to be disappointed by another dupe.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
"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
Yesterday's article was spun towards the EFF side so this article spins more toward the "regulators" side. While they are regulators of broadcasts, the issue here is whether they are legitimate regulators of non-broadcast functions of devices. To call them regulators here gives them what I consider an undeserved legitimacy.
As far as TV piracy being a growing problem. It probably will continue to be a problem until someone important catches on that all they need to do is come up with a downloadable program package that contains some forms of advertising that people will view.
One possible downloadable tv program package would feature small corner ads or something. They need to make the ads useable but not so intrusive that people feel the need to try and hack them out of there.
Coding Blog
There once was a time when I respected Slashdot for it's common-sense + Left'ish wing viewpoints. Now it looks like nothing more then an elementary school whine-fest.
The editorial board of slashdot is degenerating Fast. Not that its ever been particularly good at checking articles and correcting grammar, but in recent weeks there has been a significant increase in pro-microsoft, and now pro-cartel postings. This may only be a symptom of a misguided notion that a free software/open source forum and newssite should somehow be "unbiased" and give the enemies of their movement equal time and equal legitimacy (much like the misguided notion that Jewish leaders should debate whether or not the holocaust happened with right-wing revisionists, something the US media has actually tried to engineer, despite the inherent destructive effect of legitimizing very fring and demonstrably nonsensical notions in order to create an appearance of "balance").
Whether this is a symptom of misguided "appearance of balance at any cost," a gradual sellout of slashdot to its advertisers (Microsoft does advertise here, and who knows how much of its bottom line is being threatened if it doesn't post stories along certain political/philosophical grounds), or a shift in slashdot's targetting (moving away from us free software/opensource geeks to a more staid, corporate, proprietary audience) is hard to know. But there has definitely been a change in the tone of the site, and as someone who has been reading slashdot for many years, I can say that it is not a good change.
Spinning the banning of technology that makes recording a TV program a la a VCR as a "piracy device" takes the cake, that's for sure.
What's next, spinning the banning of general purpose computers as an attempt at banning a "piracy device" since computers can (and have been) used to violate the copyright of proprietary software (most commonly MS Windows, alas), music, or even *gasp* TV programs that were broadcast for free on television anyway?
Whoever did that writeup and/or vetted it for slashdot (if slashdot's laxidasical editing can be described as "vetting", a real stretch I grant you) should be fired.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The real story is that there WAS NO RULING YET, damn it! The question that the judges can't even decide on is whether the suing parties are in position to sue, so it's still very, very likely that nothing will come out of this. Check your facts before posting, will you?
I don't mean to be insensitive in this, but here goes.
Since we can't seem to get rid of the piracy and theft memes with respect to copyright, I propose we consider adding the rape meme.
As in those price fixing, for example, the selling price of CDs, are raping the public. They are copyright rapists. That company is a convicted rapist. Along those lines.
As in those taking undue advantage of artists are rapists as well?
See if they like such pejorative terms when applied to them. They seem to like such terms when applied to those they consider to be their opponents.
all the best,
drew
btw - three tabs open in firefox right now. slashdot, freshmeat and dictionary.com and I just got a popunder add for wall street advisor.
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
This question was settled over twenty years ago! Recording TV is not bloody piracy. The broadcasters are trotting out the same stupid arguments they made before the bench then, but this time the semantic war redefining basic terminology is making the fight unwinnable by the sane.
Copying TV is not piracy. Passing copies around is not piracy. I know, I know, HBO is pay per view. But guess what? We've been recording the shows on VCR's for years. Passing them out to friends without cable. AND NO ONE CARED. Because it's not piracy, ie SELLING the tapes, and two, it didn't hurt HBO, it only made it more popular and made more people want to subscribe. As for satellite TV and similar, they've already bought laws making recordings almost impossible anyway.
But broadcast TV is being shot through my body right now. The idea is to have as many people watch as possible. At least for the last 65 years or so. We've been recording for almost thirty years, we've beaten back the loons who tried to make it a felony, and now they're back and winning, for God's sake.
The court system is stacked with extremely business friendly judges now, thanks to twenty five years of pro-free market Presidents, and there's no way of stopping them, especially since the regulators Bush appointed were lobbyists for the very industries they now regulate. It's a looting party for corporations. The legal precedents and semantic nastiness will be with us for the rest of our lives. Technology is being roped and tied by greedy gamers of the system, so it may not save us in the end. There won't be a place in the world you can manufacture tech not approved of by the powers in the U.S. God, they're raiding in Russia! The advance of corporate government is relentless, and largely ignored by the very people it locks into its worldview.
TV? Recording? PIRACY? Why not just call it rape or murder? The penalties would be less severe.
I don't know about others here, but I pay my cable bill every month, which in my view authorizes me to watch those TV shows. Frankly, the idea that downloading a show rather than taping it is immoral and illegal is insulting.
It's been a long time.