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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.'"

3 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 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: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."