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Japanese Supreme Court Rules TV Forwarding Illegal
eldavojohn writes "If you use anything like a Slingbox in Japan, you may be dismayed to find out that a Japanese maker of a similar service has been successfully sued by Japan Broadcasting Corp. and five Tokyo-based local TV broadcasting firms under copyright violations for empowering users to do similar things. TV forwarding or place shifting is recording and/or moving your normal TV signal from its intended living room box to your home computer or anywhere on the internet. Turns out that Japan's Supreme Court overruled lower court decisions confirming fears that to even facilitate this functionality is a copyright infringement on the work that is being transferred."
This ruling is ridiculous. Once a signal is openly broadcast why do the content providers think they can limit how you view the content?
This is designed to prevent anime fansubbers from capturing raw broadcasts, subtitling them, and distributing them in the US and Europe before there are licensing deals (which are now negotiated after first run in Japan based on popularity there, and most shows aren't licensed) to protect the sales of DVDs and Blu-Rays.
It's bullshit.
This is even more bizarre in the context of it being about Japanese TV. Most of what I see when I am there are eating (not cooking) shows, odd game shows, and infomercials. And news.
Are they pissed you aren't buying another TV Provider's box?
This is the same country that, due to special interest groups, made it illegal to rent video games or consoles while leaving it perfectly legal to do the same with other types of media including dvds and music cds. This includes "selling" those video games for a week or two with the agreed upon idea of "buying it back" a week later for 10 dollars less than the original price.
So yeah, that's probably why they're doing it.
why do lawyers believe they can stop the march of technological progress?
well, its either that or do real work.
which would *you* pick?
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You fool! This is Japanese TV we're talking about!
Think about it: No more Japanese TV means a significant drop in anime produced. A significant drop in anime means less of it exported to the US (legality notwithstanding). That leads to the otaku/Japanophiles in the US losing their candy-colored pseudo-philosophic drivel. THAT leads to their now relatively-well-contained minor communities breaking down, and that leads to them breaking out and infesting the rest of the internet at large!
Don't you see? This isn't about keeping the slobbering masses stupid! This is about keeping the slobbering masses away from US!
why do lawyers believe they can stop the march of technological progress?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
Palm trees and 8
I see what they're saying, but it doesn't make any sense.
Welcome to every bit of Japanese Culture, EVER.
Yeah, and as more and more people stop watching TV, the amount of ads that show up in commercial breaks on Hulu grows. It's up to two, now, from just one -- don't you think that by the time TV "goes away," it will have reached parity, rendering this argument obsolete?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
I wonder what this means for the Japanese Government sponsered TV Streaming App:
Keyhole TV
Wikipedia Article
Looks like the issue is a commercial entity providing the space-shifting service. This isn't an individual setting up his own DVR and using a VPN to watch recorded shows. This case involves a company acting as a proxy for the individual, hoping that the following claim will protect them -
.
Having not seen actual court documents, I'm inclined to think that the third-party service is the real issue. Oh, and that pesky part about the media cartels not getting a cut.
Lawyers don't truly want to stop technological progress, they want to get rich while technology progresses. Sure a few may truly believe that improvements in technology will be the downfall of their profession (as many of us keep wishing). But any lawyer worth his suit jacket has realized that emerging technology is an amazing way to earn great money, and ingrain themselves deeper in the social/political system. It may appear that they wish technological innovation's downfall, but without an innovator to create an idea, where would the patent lawyer be.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov
Are they pissed about the possibility of the stream ending up online?
Yes. This is basically the thing. But its better to have somewhat more context: we are talking about a country with amazingly fast internet connection. Neigbourghoods are in esence connected with what we call "ethernet speed" so it's not uninimaginable that some guy buys such device and feeds his pay-per-view stream to his building's router, effectively allowing all their neigbourghs to view tv for free (or just imagine a college building the day of superbowl or victoria's secret show...).
What's going on here?
They want you to pay them before "shifting."
Palm trees and 8
Maybe by then you'll have the good sense to give up on Hulu too.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Lawyers can't stop the march of the technological progress... but they can sure as hell slow it down. Stopping the sale of devices they deem to be illegal, etc. Big companies slow technological progress until they can figure out a way to turn a profit... and they probably will eventually find a way.
And just do the sensible thing and just pirate everything (and then whine unceasingly when shows get canceled for lack of revenue from viewers) or is this a "popular culture is so crass and I'm so sophisticated it hurts, but in a snooty way, not a plebeian way" statement?
Mark my words.
Once they get rid of the old competition (e.i TV) you'll get:
-Gobs of commercials.
-demands for your personal info BEFORE you get to watch anything
-Demand proof that you are from where you are
-Etc.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
No, but most TV stations surround themselves with a plague (my collective term for a group) of lawyers.
Really? I kinda like Doves....
I would have used: a Culture of Lawyers (same as bacteria), a battery of lawyers (barracuda), a Smack of Lawyers (jelly fish), or maybe a Surfiet of Lawyers (skunks)...
my apologies to all those animals.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
And just do the sensible thing and just pirate everything (and then whine unceasingly when shows get canceled for lack of revenue from viewers) or is this a "popular culture is so crass and I'm so sophisticated it hurts, but in a snooty way, not a plebeian way" statement?
Right. As if piracy has ever been the cause of a show being cancelled.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
As opposed to some other countries where special interest groups made it OK to rent video games and consoles, but NOT okay to rent music CDs.
True story: a branch of a Japanese retail chain opened a store in my town in the US. Being the thing they do back home, they had Japanese music CDs for rent. Mind you, this was in the days before CD copying existed so it was not like you could make a perfect copy unless you had a DAT drive, which almost nobody did. And then the tapes for that would cost more than the CD. So basically CD copying didn't happen.
But the store was eventually found by the US music licensing companies (ASCAP, etc) and C&D'd over this practice of renting CDs. Apparently it's not allowed in the US, which may explain why I've never seen any other place in the US do it.
But I don't understand why. You can rent DVDs. You can rent video games. You can even borrow CDs from the public library. But you can't rent them.
And DVDs. I can barely tolerate "previews" for old movies on DVDs I purchased. I don't want coke commercials.
Step one: Install XBMC. Step two: start it. Step three: configure it to attempt to skip annoying PGCs.
Mixed in with my other apps I enjoy vlc because it is good at playing DVDs (recently) and it is good at skipping video. In my living room it's XBMC on Windows (I also watch Netflix on the system.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's called the Ouroborus, and its a snake swallowing its own tail. Watching modern business, cannibalizing itself in the misguided hope of squeezing the last frigging cent, yen, drachma, or peso out of a product, service, or piece of IP is like watching the Ouroborus make a lunch of itself, happily munching away until that last mouthful slips quietly into some parallel dimension (I'm guessing hell, but at least some kind of mindless oblivion.) Sony Legal stomps on Sony music so it can maintain a deathgrip on the IP of recording artists, the RIAA consumes its own customers, and makes a public campaign of lies about why its failing to sell records, its a bunch of hypertestosteronal primates thinking they can kill and threaten their way to controlling every aspect of what people see, think and hear, and a neofascist government (both in Japan and the U.S.) which knee-jerkingly gives these crime bosses anything they ask for. The system is broken. Information (like art for instance) flows like water and as long as people can watch someone on a street corner playing beautiful music, the big guys at the media conglomerates are threatened. Personally I'm tired and nauseous of the cookie cutter clone artists being pumped out of the product packaging wombs of the big media producers. In the 60s and 70s, we got female artists ranging every depth and breadth of sound, body type, color, style, flavor, and sophistication from the ragged edge of self destruction blues pouring out of Janis Joplin, to the cool jazz pop of Joni Michell's "Free Man in Paris". None of these women looked like Vogue models, there were real, and deep, and sexy, and dangerously smart. Look at the selection of prepackaged, flavorless, flawless, lifeless female artists that perform today. The only female artist I'm hearing on the popular radio today that I'm still certain has a pulse and not a set of EveReady(tm) batteries, is Pink.
The big guys running the studios are so busy defending proprietary turf, and massaging those big stiff egos, that they can't admit they're strangling the newborn future in its cradle. Right or wrong (mostly wrong) they are willing to ride those egos all the way to bankruptcy and oblivion, while the internet makes possible a new and profound democratization of artistic expression the likes of which has never before been seen. New business people will grow up in the place of suicidal giants. Young intelligent men and women who can see the opportunity, and a business model that will generate amazing new fortunes will fill the vacuum, and we'll all remember when the snake swallowed its tail and went out in a last rage filled cry. To quote Mrs. Gump "Forrest, stupid is as stupid does!"
Because our government is almost entirely made up of lawyers? We may have representation by place of residence, but not by social or economic class, or profession.