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Court Upholds Ruling On Dish Network's 'Hopper'

Posted by samzenpus on from the hop-away dept.

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.'"

8 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Hey... by msauve · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Hey... by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Dish Network want to re-broadcast something, they need permission. If they want to alter it, creating a derivative work for commercial use, they need further permission.

      I don't know how Dish works currently, but when I had their service the receiver hooked up to a antenna for OTA bradcast TV, separate from the satellite dish. Dish Network was not rebroadcasting it.

      And if fast-forwarding through a copy of some content that you possess (whatever its origin) is "creating a derivative work", then anyone using any sort of reference book who doesn't start reading it from the beginning each time is screwed.

      I used to have (well, still have but never use) a ReplayTV PVR that had a similar commercial skipping feature. (There was a lawsuit about it but it was dropped when the company went bankrupt; later models omitted the feature.) All it did was automate what I'd been doing with a VCR (yes, I am ancient of days) for years, hitting fast-forward to skip the noise. So long as the device is just fulfilling the request of its user to skip forward to a different part of the content, there is no "derivative work", no "rebroadcast", and the data's so-called "owners" can get stuffed.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    2. Re:Hey... by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I was under the impression they cut the ads out then rebroadcast it. That's copyright infringement.

      Turns out the DVR uses closed captions and other meta data to do the cutting on the DVR. That's protected fair use time-shifting. It's also going to be vulnerable to the networks altering the meta data to trick the DVR into not skipping certain ads - they could charge a premium for those...

      Dish have a few patents that describe this.

  2. Re:They can try to defeat te tech by Huntr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    None of that would work because Dish technicians actually watch the broadcasts and manually record when the commercial breaks start and stop.

  3. Re:Down the line... by pwizard2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On OTA TV I tolerate advertisement because I can pick up the signal for free. On the other hand, people have to pay for fucking cable/satellite service and they still get ads. Back when I got cable I was upset because I couldn't a-la-carte the channels I really wanted so I was stuck paying for a bunch of shit I had no interest in watching. Broadcasters/channels get no sympathy from me because cable simply isn't worth paying for. I make do with OTA.

    --
    "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
  4. Wow, it sounds terrible by Camael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You probably read it this article.

    At Dish headquarters in Englewood, a suburb of Denver, the day begins no later than 9 a.m. Badges used to be the preferred method of entry into the building. But a few years ago, after noticing that some employees were taking advantage of the system by having others badge-in for them, Ergen upgraded to fingerprint scanners. If a worker is late, an e-mail is immediately sent to human resources, which then sends another to that person’s boss, and sometimes directly to Ergen.

    Or maybe on AOL

  5. Re:Down the line... by crioca · · Score: 3, Interesting

    if you kill the viability of the ad to any serious degree, you can expect some kind of consequential change on the horizon.

    Collapse of the broadcast entity? Why would I have a problem with this? The “broadcast entity” is the favoured medium of the copyright cartels, who’re doing their best to make the interaction between artist and audience as painful as possible so they can continue on in their role as intermediary. At the same time like any business they want to maximise their profits and minimize their risk. Only “risk” here takes the form of investing in new content, meaning that originality and experimentation are deemed as negative values.

    The collapse of the broadcast entity would speed up the disintermediation between artist and audience and expose new streams of revenue and financing. We’d end up with more artists making more money, producing more content that costs less.

  6. Re:Down the line... by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Watching The Walking Dead doesn't make me want to buy a Hyundai SUV.

    Maybe not you personally, but you know what brand of SUV they drive in that show so the advertising worked.

    --
    No sig today...