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Fox Sues Dish Over "Auto Hop" Ad-Skipping Feature
therealobsideus writes "Dish recently announced Auto Hop, giving its customers with the Hopper DVR the ability to 'hop' past commercial break on recordings. In response, Fox has filed suit against Dish in U.S. District Court, seeking to block the technology." The L.A. Times has coverage, too. Fox claims that giving viewers the ability to skip commercials on recorded television shows demonstrates the "clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem."
Commercials are mandatory! Any attempt to not view them will result in a law suite!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Fox has filed suit against all electronics manufacturers that have installed a fast-forward function on digital media playing device. Audio cassette manufacturers must remove fast-forward and rewind capabilities because users could skip a recorded radio broadcast commercial by flipping the tape, rewinding, then flipping the tape again.
Next, man sued for getting beer during commercials. The assertive defence is that the beer he was getting was in the commercials, but FOX claims that is a moot point. Budweiser to file amicus curiae brief. Says they do not support suing their own customers.
I had a law suite, once. The lease agreement was 249 pages long and I had to pay $500 per hour just to stand in the doorway.
Is there anyway to skip the content and just watch commercials?
Given that quality of TV programming, I fail to see the threat.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Personally I don't have a problem with that as i never watch free-to-air anyway
So not only are you missing the commercials you are missing all the product placements in the program as well? I'd start looking for a lawyer...
It's full of annoying commercials?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
no. as he is talking abount one feature, he wouldn't use the plural 'they'. his post is more correct that you're correction.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
And soon after, gaffer tape gets outlawed as a copyright circumvention device.
How? I thought it was just a nipple supression device. >:)
*whimpers and crawls into a corner*
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Wrestling is surprisingly Sci-Fi. The science is in the steroids, and the fiction is in the wrestling.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As a Hulu Plus user myself, I'd love to know how you skip the ads. I've never noticed the option.
Go pee.
I was accused of hacking someone's web site once. A site only worked with IE. In order to be helpful, I did a telnet to port 80 and pasted a HEAD command showing that they used backslashes in the huttup of the redirect, and explained that this was the cause of the problem.
The e-mail I got back was downright hostile and accusatory.
That taught me that (a) no good deed goes unpunished, (b) there is no limit to the amount of ignorance of web site operators, and (c) don't give HEAD to those who don't deserve it.
That didn't work. And now my chair is wet. Damn you.