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Court Upholds Ruling On Dish Network's 'Hopper'
An anonymous reader writes "The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling in favor of Dish Network, allowing the company to continue forward with it ad-skipping "Hopper" technology. From the article: 'Last year, Fox Broadcasting Company, with the support of other broadcast networks, sued Dish for its "Hopper" DVR and its "Auto Hop" feature, which automatically skips over commercials. According to the Fox, the Hopper automatically records eight days' worth of prime time programming on the four major networks that subscribers can play back on request. Beginning a few hours after the broadcast, viewers can choose to watch a program without ads. As we observed when the it started, this litigation was yet another in a long and ignominious series of efforts by content owners to use copyright law to control the features of personal electronic devices, and to capture for themselves the value of new technologies no matter who invents them.'"
This is about "broadcast" networks. They can't have their cake, and eat it, too. In exchange for getting use of public airwaves to make a profit, the public has a right to use what's broadcast.
Next step - in what way is putting content on the public airwaves not placing it in the public domain?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed...
What, that us unwashed masses can still use VCR-like features on modern equipment? Huzzah! So glad our courts are clogged up like a fat southern guy's arteries with pointless legal meanderings. What other landmark rulings can I hope to read soon... books in electronic format can be loaned just like regular books? That linking to a page on the internet shouldn't warrant 10 years in prison under the Computer Fraud Act of... whatever?
Where's a billion dollar frivolous landsuit and contempt of court ruling when you need one, guys? These corporations are killing the court system, and you're dealing with it about as well as that diabetic fat dude I just mentioned is when he neglects to take his shots. You're gonna get tingles at the extremities, and before you know it, you'll be deaf, blind, stupid, and having your bowels cleaned out by orderlies because you can't even shit right in a few years at this rate.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
My mind picture a filthy overfed rat that when cornered sues because it's not smart enough to do anything else to overcome those who are smart enough to wipe their annoying crap out? They get the biggest budgets and expense accounts of any section of any company generally too. I guess money, their god, doesn't solve all problems.
What i see with this ruling in dish's favor causing some big issues when broadcasting contracts are up for renewal. they will be demanding more money from dish.
According to the Fox, the Hopper automatically records eight days' worth of prime time programming on the four major networks...
Ummm, This, Discovery, USA and BBC-AM? If the Hopper records only the four major networks, FOX has no standing to sue because they aren't involved.
This Ad skipping technology can be defeated by keeping: -
1: Avoiding abrupt volume increases,
2: Avoiding abrupt changes in scene colour saturation,
3: Keeping the network logo on during commercials,
4: Randomly playing commercials. I have come to be in position to predict when a commercial is coming on.
Someone should develop the tech...or even better, patent it.
I agree that the decision is sensible in that it allows you to use your own gear at least somewhat as you would choose to (certainly they are not letting us use our gear "freely"), still, one has to consider what a broadcast entity dependent upon advertising revenues will do if those ads no longer generate cash.
One fairly obvious path is "product placement", where the "ad" is in the show with some character brandishing, using, or otherwise making a point about it. That can be subtle... or it could be quite heavy-handed. There are other paths, some of which end with the disruption or even collapse of the broadcast entity -- if the advertising shifts context -- say, to billboards -- then there's no funding going to the broadcast entity, so now what? Or you might find yourself taxed, a' la PBS or the BBC, in order that these entities have operating funds. Some might applaud that, but some will scream bloody murder about the additional levy.
Anyway, since ads do almost entirely support a lot of these entities, if you kill the viability of the ad to any serious degree, you can expect some kind of consequential change on the horizon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Viacom, Disney and other content owners will start jacking up the prices on Dish for revenue lost from commercials, they'll have those mexican stand offs where Viacom for example ups the rates, Dish refuses to pay and eventually does. Then the consumer gets the bill.
Actually I remember when Cable first started appearing in neighborhoods and it wasn't all commercials and going to cable meant you weren't inundated with every Billy Mays ad out there. Now every Cable Channel is 20 mins of programming, 10 mins commercials per half hour. It's bad.. On My DVR, I just skip past it anyway, nice for Dish to have the feature built in now only if Verizon would do the same.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If you cannot innovate litigate. If you can't litigate legislate. Seems like this is the business model of business involved in the entertainment industry.
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Do ads pay for some broadcast TV? Almost certainly yes. If it was provably the case that most people watching these channels bypassed the ads in some complete way, would ad revenue drop precipitously? Almost certainly yes. Should the Law therefore ensure that viewers of broadcast TV are forced to be exposed to the ads? Absolutely not!
Broadcast TV with ads is a business model. It is a voluntary social contract between the broadcaster and viewers that carries no weight in Law. Of course, viewers should be made aware that if too few of them are provably watching the ads, the viability of such a business model will end. A business has a right to make such an appeal to its (potential) customers.
When, however, the business owners go to court to defend that which they have no right to legally defend, they become criminals of the worst kind. Rupert Murdoch is not simply 'trying it on'. Murdoch is attempting to use legal precedent, bought via political influence, to reduce the rights of ordinary citizens in the USA. Of course, Murdoch has always been a criminal of the very worst kind.
In Europe, Murdoch faced competition to his direct broadcast satellite services. No problem- he had an Israeli division of one of his companies hack the smart cards of his main competitors. Then the encryption data was handed to Israeli crime gangs, who flooded the market with low cost counterfeit smart cards.
A little later, Murdoch activated legal action against tens of thousands of his former customers in the USA. Their 'crime' was having their names on a database for a company that sold smart card equipment. Not, mind you, illegal smart cards or illegal software. Just industry standard interface gear. Murdoch claimed, with ZERO evidence, that his ex-customers used the LEGAL smart card equipment to create illegal access systems in their own home.
Later again, Murdoch was found to have run the biggest illegal phone tapping operation in the history of the UK. However, since Murdoch is one of Tony Blair's inner circle, and is an official propagandist of the UK state alongside the BBC, he hardly had anything to worry about.
Murdoch thinks the law is for sale. Each year, his corporate Xmas cards show Fox and the competing news organisations as drawn 'foxes' manipulating drawn 'sheep' (that is to say YOU the sheeple) in some way. One card showed foxes playing chess with sheep as the pieces. Another showed foxes racing in sleds pulled by teams of sheep.
The filthy shills here tell you to hate the term SHEEPLE. Rupert Murdoch, your lord and propaganda master, sends Xmas cards to Blair and Obama where you are actually depicted as sheep. Isn't time to get a clue, people?
...one has to consider what a broadcast entity dependent upon advertising revenues will do if those ads no longer generate cash.
That is certainly the argument Fox used. What they conveniently left out is that Fox collects retransmission fees from Dish.
In fact, Dish was at one time forced to drop Fox programming because, according to Dish :-
In addition, the broadcast networks including Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC have demanded that its affiliates hand over a percentage of the money they receive from local cable operators that retransmit their signals.
Basically, its all about the money. The broadcasting networks have already been paid by retransmission fees and are double dipping into advertising fees.
i dont understand what fox thought they were going to succeed in doing... there is now law for them to have grounds for a lawsuit. you cant sue someone because they are reducing your profit by not allowing you to abuse the system.
You probably read it this article.
Or maybe on AOL
I mean, I know that they traditionally used audio levels to detect when the commercial breaks start and end, but now there are quite a few networks which do not practice this (which is nice for people that don't want to have to manually turn down the tv volume whenever commercials start when they are watching live programming and turn the volume back up when the show starts again).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Learn some proper fucking grammar.
Everything on TV is one big product placement with overlaid ads now anyway. You might as well "hop" on one foot. It's good exercise to make up for all the time you spend in front of TV.
Next thing Fox is going to mandate all cable/sat companies to only sell "always on" devices that can only stream Fox and lock owners in their homes. If the cable company subscribers don't watch fox 24/7 at a blasting loud volume, they want extra money from the companies because they are losing money. Come on, you can't expect people to actually watch your show or not go to the toilet, kitchen or whatever during commercial breaks either. Just because there's "fast forward" on a VCR doesn't mean it should be outlawed because you can skip commercials. Commercials have gotten (technically) ignored since they were on TV. You can't make people watch them any more in current times than you could in the past.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Advertisers do not pay to have their adverts replayed in perpetuity.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
our town was voting to let cable TV to be deployed here, we were promised that there would be no commercials on any cable channel. That was one of the main reason it got approved for deployment, no commercials because we had to pay to get cable TV. That promise was quickly broken! I have read other comments that the same promise was made in many other towns as well.
Now I don't have cable or satellite TV. Why? Way too many annoying commercials, and crap across the bottom of the screen that ruins the content I am watching. I now have Netflix, and occasionally buy DVDs (I will never buy Blu-ray crap!) I very much like NOT having commercials. And back when DVRs first came out, some were able to automagically skip commercials while recording. Then Hollyweed and the MPAA stuck their noses where they didn't belong and convinced DVR manufacturers to discontinue that feature, though most people like the idea and wanted that feature.
I think the FCC needs to step in and we should go back to what we had in the late 60s/early 70s...very limited (3-6 minutes per hour) commercials. Cable and sattelite should not be allowed to display station id or commercials/announcements on any part of the screen (except dangerous weather alerts) during a movie or TV show. In fact cable/satellite TV customers are already being price gouged extremely, so there should be strict price caps, alacarte programming, and NO commercials allowed!
[Full disclosure: I work on a product like this]
This kind of system is also in operation in Germany. There was a major lawsuit between RTL (huge German broadcaster) and TC Unterhaltungselektronic AG, that very much reflects this lawsuit. Here is a link to the German court ruling as reported by Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/fernseh-fee-bgh-erlaubt-verkauf-von-werbeblockern-a-305779.html
I realise this is a bit of a shameless plug, but it is relevant to the interests of this thread:
http://fernsehfee.de/
Android Software Engineer
If the BBC can run on £145.50 why does it cost £245 for a basic SKY package with 11 minues of adverts per hour.
OTA broadcasting in America is near its death. It's model is no longer sustainable. First we have Dish Hopper/DVRs which will cut off ad revenue. Then you have Aereo lawsuit, which will would set the legal precedent that cable companies no longer have to pay retransmission fees, then stations would no longer have revenue from retransmission. Third, the FCC is taking away most of the broadcast spectrum and selling it cell phone companies. After which there will be only enough spectrum for a few channels per market. Finally there is the lack of programming as the highest tier of quality programming is now produced for cable and not broadcast television. To survive, broadcasters need income via advertising or subscription fees. If both the Hopper and Aereo lawsuits fail broadcasters will get neither and their business model no longer has a revenue source. Fox and CBS have already indicated they are willing to shut down OTA. In a decade, PBS and few independent broadcasters (religous and home shopping channels) will be the only stations remaining on the airwaves.
I already skip most commericials, either by switching channels or just shutting the silly thing off and going outside and weeding the garden/cutting firewood/etc...
First of all, someone has already patented a method of preventing the use of a commercial ad skip feature....
However, some 10 years ago (I think.... it's been a while), back when the TIVO was a new piece of technology, someone developed ACE - Automatic Commercial Elimination.
This was made possible by a single piece of "technology" that ALL TV and radio stations MUST use. And that is a signal to determine the beginning and end of commercial blocks.
Sure, they can just remove that, but then the feds will come running and complain about non-compliance, and the maximum number of permitted commercials etc. Yes, most countries actually HAVE a limit on the amount of commercials per hour. And determining if a station adheres to the rules is done by measuring the gaps between these signals.
Admittedly, this is based on knowledge and knowhow that's about 15 years old. I haven't been to the states since, but I cannot imagine that things have changed that much.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
I say that because for years I have been using an application called BeyondTV by Snapstream and it has a SmartSkip feature that automatically marks the beginning and end of commercials and doesn't require any manual input.
I would find it hard to believe that Dish would actually pay people to do something there was automated technology to do.
Do you have a link or something to verify your statement?
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I think bittorrent has that time beat by about an hour at least.
My method is simple.
1: don't subscribe to a cable/satellite service
2: do something more productive with your time.
For less than two months worth of my old DirecTV bill, I got an inexpensive used electric guitar. Less than six months worth got me hockey skates and equipment. less than four months worth got my wife a mandolin. I'm sure you can think of better things to do with your time as well.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This is the same code that has been sued over AT LEAST three times. What a total waste of money and effort. Can't a higher court make a betamax vrs Sony ruling and get this over already?
Christ now the hook is 1 hr after you can forward ads. Good luck, if that's all it takes to make this legit, more power to you, but two (three?) companies have been shuttered trying to keep this code legal & alive. I'd think about that if I were on the board of dish.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
What if I don't skip the commercials? What if instead, I simply time-shift them to 5 minutes after I go to bed? :-)
Perhaps if the ratios weren't on the ballpark of 18 minutes of programming per 30 minutes (seriously, that's 2/5's of any time block for commercials), then we wouldn't be so apt to cut them out. If you compare the ratios from an older show, such as Star Trek The Original Series, you'll get on average 50 to 53 minutes of programming per hour. That is a FAR better ratio of programming to commercials, and also raises the value of any commercials shown as our eyeballs and brains don't hit saturation.
I've used a stopwatch to time the ACTUAL content of a 30 minute TV show on several networks. Discounting the "Intro" time and "exit credits" time, there is on average about 11 minutes of program content in a 30 minute show. WTF? I never watch TV in real time anymore. My Hopper DVR only hops past the 4 primtime channel commercials, so I use the jump ahead 30 seconds button on my remote for other programs. I'm all for cutting the number of commercials in favor of producy placement, provided it fits into the program seamlessly. ( place that can of pepsi label out etc.) When I was a kid, there were only two 2.2 minute commercial breaks in a 30 minute show, and only one 2.2 minute commercial in a 15 minute show. Barely time to take a wizzz. Now you can go to the kitchen, cook supper, set the table, pour drinks, AND go take a wizz, and the damn commercials are still running when you get back.....
Is it really that hard to fast forward thru the commercials of your recorded shows? If we keep demanding TV shows without commercials, something has to give. When I say "has to give", I mean that we will have to pay a hefty price to watch re-runs of Gilligan's Island on our DVR's!!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!