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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?"
Whoever didn't see this coming.... can I have your job?
That said... "clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem." *facepalm* The Internet is SUPPOSED to destroy ecosystems built on artificial scarcity. Free markets and black swans are a bitch, aren't they?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
Good! Let's tear down that century-old ecosystem, including the business models of those leeches. They're dying anyway. Let's start over from scratch and figure out how we can do it again, this time in ways that don't require stunting technological innovation.
blah blah blah ... social contracts ... blah blah blah ... violating copyright ... blah blah blah
Cry me a river. If they stopped violating the spirit of the rules that were meant to keep a certain amount of content in a given unit of time for a show by calling their ads for their other shows on the their networks content instead of ads, I might not be so upset. Right now there are so many ads that it seems like we get only fifteen minutes of actual programming in a half-hour show. If they will require the ads, I will simply cut back even further on my TV watching.
As for copyright, I don't see any copyright issue. The user is choosing to ignore the portion they do not wish to see, if the commercials are even considered part of the same program by copyright. Which, last I thought, were not.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Browsers that getted sued for having ad blocking features.
Not watching commercials is NOT violation of copyright.
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.
I understand why Fox and Friends wouldn't like this kind of feature, but what kind of legal ground do they have here? They don't own copyrights on the advertising (well, most of it anyway), and the content they do own (the TV shows) aren't being modified or changed by Dish.
The simple fact that's being reiterated over and over by tech such as commercial-skip and AdBlock is that advertising as a sustainable revenue model is on the way out. At the same time people have started rejecting being shoehorned into the time slots chosen by networks -- most people are willing to pay for their entertainment, but they want to watch it on their own terms, and this also isn't conducive to effective advertising. The sooner content providers realize this, the better off they'll be. The advertising-sponsored entertainment (TV and the Internet primarily) honeymoon is just about over.
Unfortunately for consumers it will probably get worse before it gets better because studios and actors are too accustomed to their over-inflated multi-million dollar salaries. Advertising will become more invasive as it clings for life, and all sorts of litigation will spring up before it finally falls apart. Some forms will always have a place in entertainment (product placement, for example), but eventually consumers will start simply paying for what content they want to consume.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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If this is illegal, what the fuck is a DVR? What the fuck is a VCR? Both can be used to circumvent commercials.
Man, I hope they get their ass smacked down for this, just as those other idiots did in the past in the other lawsuits.
This happened a number of years ago when ReplayTV offered a feature that automatically skipped commercials. A bunch of studios sued them. The result was that the new DVRs required the users to press a "scene skip" button on the remote to skip over the commercial break. ReplayTV was later bought by DirectTV.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Just ask ReplayTV how well this works out in the end.
NBC and CBS have joined in as well. DISH has filed a suit themselves seeking a ruling to declare that the technology is not infringing on TV copyrights. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/dish-seeks-ruling-on-feature-that-skips-commercials/
Also, lets not forget about Apple's patent on software that would basically freeze our device unless we were demonstrably watching the ads they serve to us, making us answer questions about products featured and even using the camera to make sure that our eyes are focused on the screen.
How long will it be before we see something similar on anything with a front facing camera? I wonder if Microsoft has plans to build this into their next Kinect? This is where these assholes are going with this, and then they'll bitch and complain when even more people just pirate their shit. God, how ridiculous...
Is there anyway to skip the content and just watch commercials?
I don't see the legal issue with it, but certainly if everyone starts using such a service then advertisers will see no value in it and abandon free-to-air and it will die leaving only paid services. Personally I don't have a problem with that as i never watch free-to-air anyway but i know a lot of people would be unhappy about losing free-to-air.
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.
If this is illegal, what the fuck is a DVR? What the fuck is a VCR? Both can be used to circumvent commercials...
Ah, quite right, but apparently fast-forwarding a commercial at 200x and not being able to see a damn thing vs. being able to skip it altogether and not be able to see a damn thing are worlds apart legally...er, somehow.
Be real, who watches ads? Even when watching the few shows I watch religiously every week, where my eyes are glued to the screen during the show, I hardly notice the ads, let alone could tell you which ads I just saw or even come up with some kind of detail, or what product they tried to cram down my throat.
And I'm hardly special in this way. Try it. Go watch TV with your pals, don't tell them before and then, after the show, ask them to come up with five commercial they just saw and offer them 10 bucks if they succeed.
I betcha you won't spend a dime on this experiment.
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...
Actually, Fox isn't milking the consumers, they're milking their ad customers (companies, not you. You're the product they're selling). I'm pretty sure Fox knows that nobody watches their ads anymore, but this would make it blatantly obvious.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What really makes me wonder what these idiots are smoking is if average Joe gets up and looks for snacks , grabs his wife's boobs, accidentally sharts and has to hit the bathroom, is he violating the contract that makes TV possible?
Why aren't people who pay for cable TV being taxed (so to speak) twice? Once for the subscription and once again for the fucking ads? One of cable TVs big "draws" in the early days was "no commercials..." That didn't last.
Basically we have a bunch of suits who have no idea how stupid they sound... I don't know what's more sad, the idea itself or the actual spreading of the idea... I have this sneaking suspicion no one at Fox (Hey Rupert, suck my crank!) has a voice in their head that tells them "that's a bad idea... keep it to yourself." I imagine they learned about electricity by sticking a fork in a light socket too.
Explains a great many things, I think.. Suffice to say, is there anyone sane left in the entertainment industry? My decision to skip the theater and rental counter is becoming a better and better idea.
I think Joe Sixpack slapped with a lawsuit for getting beer might wake the sheeple up enough to say "what the fuck?" instead of "ooooh. I gotta drop mad bank on a 3D tv so I can experience movies how they were MEANT to be seen! To the Best Buy!"
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I was actually quite surprised recently when I re-order cable television to watch the Canucks lose in the first round of the playoffs.. I was surprised at all the products, movies, and television that I had no idea about until I saw commercials on tv for the first time in two years. Maybe I'm unique, but I doubt that. I think commericals and advertisements have more effect on us than most people are willing to admit. I'll go out on a limb and say that advertising via commericals on television still works for companies (especially clever and memorable ones such as Coke or Apple)
Once for the subscription and once again for the fucking ads? One of cable TVs big "draws" in the early days was "no commercials..." That didn't last.
I hear ya. Same for Satellite radio. Bought my first new car with one two months back and I was quite surprised to hear commercials on the non-native channels (Fox, CNN, etc).
Even more annoying was that they appeared to be the same 5 damned UBER obnoxious ones over and over. Hell, the most obnoxious one was for one of the native Sirius channels that I expect doesnt get much listenership. (I dont recall the channel but it was VERY niche... ) While they love to tout the fact that you can listen to the same station cross country without losing it, they make it so you dont WANT to listen to it cross country...
I fear this is what the plan is for the future.
The really pathetic thing is that instead of a sensible ratio of programming to advertisements, the networks - to include the cable only channels - are taking a dual approach. A 50/50 mix on television, un-skippable ads and threats on DVD.
Is there any wonder that people pirate movies? Lessee, it's easier, you don't have a hour and a half movie taking three hours, don't have to listen to mind boggling stupid commercials. And I've taken the alternate route. I don't watch many movies at all any more. Which means I do not see the advertising.
If Television is attempting suicide, it's working as as far as I am concerned.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Honestly, I don't really care about the TV issue one way or the other; but the potential precedent is ugly.
If Dish's plan were to tape the broadcasts, chop out the chaff, and send you the final cut, that'd be a clear-cut case of a copyright infringing unauthorized derivative work.
However, their actual implementation, as best I've been able to tell, doesn't modify the copyrighted source material at all, it just adds specific automated behavior to the playback device. If that is 'copyright infringement' then virtually anything a playback device might choose to get fancy about is subject to the veto of team content. Automatic volume reduction on your music when you get a phone call? Sure. Replaygain volume normalization? Sure. Stretching or letterboxing to put 4:3 on 16:9 or vice-versa? Why certainly. Applying a custom CSS stylesheet to a website against the operator's wishes? You bet.
Yes, it may well happen to be true that OTA broadcasts aren't going to be helped by easy commercial skipping; but something isn't 'copyright infringement' merely because it happens to be bad for the checkbooks of people who hold copyrights. It also has to, y'know, infringe. In this case, if the definition of 'infringement' is stretched far enough to save our poor, beleaguered, broadcasters it is stretched far enough to allow near-total control over any device that handles rendering of copyrighted material, which is virtually anything.
Compared to that, letting all of broadcast TV burn looks like a fantastic idea, even if you are otherwise sympathetic to it...
I wonder if these folks would be shocked to hear that even VCR's had a feature known as 'Fast Forward'. It was a ground breaking function that allowed one to skip content they did not want to see on a recording.
And soon after, gaffer tape gets outlawed as a copyright circumvention device.
How? I thought it was just a nipple supression device. >:)
Not only that, some VCR remotes had a button specifically designed to make it easy to skip commercials: each press skipped by forward 30 seconds.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I wonder if YOU would be to hear that there WAS a lawsuit pretty much for that reason a Long long time ago...
Home and professional recording
One other major consequence of the Betamax technology's introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984, the "Betamax case"), with the U.S. Supreme Court determining home videotaping to be legal in the United States, wherein home videotape cassette recorders were a legal technology since they had substantial noninfringing uses. This precedent was later invoked in MGM v. Grokster (2005), where the high court agreed that the same "substantial noninfringing uses" standard applies to authors and vendors of peer-to-peer file sharing software (notably excepting those who "actively induce" copyright infringement through "purposeful, culpable expression and conduct").
I could have just linked BUT I think that copying for personal use is rather appropriate in a story like this. See? A small unknown and rather likable company always looking out to protect the common man against big evil media companies, Sony, stood their ground and gave us the VCR and made it so that ungrateful snots like DJRumpy don't even remember that once the media he has been spoonfed since birth wanted to deny him this.
Mind you, all this is an old story that has to deal with one of those "everyone knows the social rule but nobody follows it because we are all special but others should follow it because they are not".
Fox has a point, oh my god I will go to hell for that, TV broadcasting gets it money by giving YOU TV and advertisters eyeballs to watch the commercials. It is pretty straight forward entertainment advertising. You watch the pretty girl strut her stuff, you take in that smoking might be good for you after all. Soaps made this very clear, "Women of the world, you like endless drama that never ever gets to a point? Well, we at your favority washing powder brand (and since we give you this lovely tv, surely we are) give you what you want, both on the TV and in the washing machine!".
Of course, this social contract sorta goes two ways. The advertiser actually has to put on a show. The girl has to be pretty, the TV for women absolutely devoid of any intelligence whatsoever. It is NOT part of the contract to completely saturate the viewer and remove any actual entertainment no matter how vapid from the stream. You shouldn't put the pretty girl completely inside the giant pack of smokes. The deal is, nice bits stick out to make it worth looking at her!
TV now has a cable cost, special channels cost extra subscription fees and in exchange for this, we get even MORE commercials!
It is NOT that people hate commercials, see the superbowl ads but it is that when you PUT them freaking everywhere and turn the super bowl into 3 hours of commercials and 15 minutes of action (actually, ain't it already that? Perhaps I should not have used the most boring sport in the world as an example) with the action overlaid and surrounded by ads people just get annoyed.
If you put on a production of a classical piece of theather say eh.... Hamlet ( I do know more then one piece, I assure you! I am not an American after all, no I don't have to proof it) and put up a message "this brought to you by Coca Cola" few would mind. You might even put a banner beside the stage for the brand. BUT if you start to go "To drink Coke or to drink a lesser known brand" people will start to get upset.
Soaps were okay to be interrupted every now and then, after all it gave the women sometime to do some actually bloody housework. It always struck me as odd how women can claim house work is so fucking hard when there is all this TV aimed at them during their supposed working hours. How many TV programs are on during the day aimed at men at work? ZERO! Men don't get to lay on the sofa and watch TV all day dammit! We got to mess around with that new sexy teen girl intern non-stop! How about my wife mess around with the intern and I lay on the
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perfect. Then the cable companies will be forced to offer many of their more expensive channels a la carte, and I'll no longer have to subsidize all the folks who watch networks like ESPN that I don't care about.
Even better, we, the subscribers, will have more of a voice when it comes to the content, and it will no longer be profitable to do stupid crap like airing wrestling on the Sci-Fi channel just to bring in more ad revenue.
I fail to see the downside here. Instead of hidden costs that we pay by buying products from companies who have to make up for all the money they spent on ads, we'll simply be paying those fees directly to the entertainment companies. In the long run, the cost should be about the same; it will just be easier to see the bottom line.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Er...BBC doesn't have adverts. Never has, hopefully never will.
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."