[mythtv-users] Congress to Make Commercial Skipping Illegal

Bill Chmura Bill at Explosivo.com
Tue Nov 16 17:43:50 UTC 2004


See...  Now if you donate to the EFF, We can keep people like Wendy fighting 
the man!  (And clarifying things for us)

(and if you make the right donation, you can get a cool t-shirt - unless thats 
been discontinued).

Thanks Wendy!


On Tuesday 16 November 2004 12:05 pm, Wendy Seltzer wrote:
> At 10:24 AM 11/16/2004 -0600, Lane Schwartz wrote:
> >I understand that Section 212 of this bill makes it explicit that it
> >is OK to skip sections of a movie. The way I am reading it, it also
> >seems to say that it is not OK to use a computer program to skip
> >commercials.
> >
> >(This is also the interpretation of the Wired article:
> >http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65704,00.html)
> >
> >Am I incorrect in my analysis?
>
> Not incorrect so much as incomplete.  Section 212 is structured as an
> exemption from copyright/trademark liability, which you only need if what
> you're doing is otherwise (c)/TM infringement.  While the exemption here is
> limited to scene skipping, not commercial skipping, I'd argue that you
> don't need the exemption for either activity, because both would be covered
> by copyright fair use (and don't even invove trademark law).  That's what
> we argued on behalf of ReplayTV owners,
> <http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/Newmark_v_Turner/>, and the makers of the
> ClearPlay technology for skipping scenes in movies.
>
> So this part of the bill doesn't create new liability for commercial
> skipping, it just fails to take some away where it may or may not
> exist.  How that would play out in court would depend on the circumstances
> (and the lawyering).
>
> Overall, it's still an awful bill.
> <http://wendy.seltzer.org/bills/hr2391.pdf>
> <http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr2391>
>
> --Wendy
>
> --
> Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.com
> Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
> Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
> http://wendy.seltzer.org/
> Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org/

-- 
=========================================================
Bill Chmura - www.fistfullofcode.com & www.explosivo.com
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