[mythtv-users] Slightly OT - Hollywood after the Analog Hole again

[Dewey Smolka]

I'm also kind of confused by the whole Tommy Chong thing too. As far
as I understood it water pipes were legal, and drug paraphernalia
isn't drug paraphernalia until it's been used -- i.e. you couldn't be
busted for having a new water pipe, but if that pipe had residue in it
you could be busted.

I also suppose this is related to the recent Grokster decision and the
legality/illegality (in terms of selling rather than possessing)
depends on how the product is marketed and promoted -- i.e. it's not
illegal to sell a pipe that's marketed as providing 'smooth tocacco
flavor', but it would be illegal to sell a pipe marketed as a 'super
dope experiece'.

I realize this is way, way, way off topic, and just to be clear, I
don't smoke dope, I don't like dope, and I don't think dope is a good
thing to smoke.

But to try to bring it back on topic -- the legality/illegality of
water pipes is quite irrelevant so long as glass, plumbing fixtures,
and pocket butane torches are legal. This comes back to the topic
because even if cature devices are illegal, the components used to
make them are not.

In a different way, it's also related to homebrew and alcohol laws.
It's illegal for a shop to sell alcohol to a minor, but it's not
illegal to sell the same minor barley malt, hops, yeast, fermenting
bins, airlocks, etc, etc (at least I never had a problem with this way
back when I was in school, and the shop knew damn well I was under
21).

As long as there are legitimate uses for audio/video capture devices
(and there are plenty), I don't think it's possible to ban the devices
because they could be used for illegal purposes. That doesn't mean
that our friends in Hollywood won't try, but I'm pretty sure it's not
going anywhere.

The thing to worry about, as I think someone else noted, is that this
ridiculous proposal can set the groundwork for a 'compromise' in the
future that makes the **AA look like they're giving something up.

Either way, there's a joker in the deck we're forgetting about: In the
US there's tens of millions of people with hundreds of millions of
hours of home video on tape, and many of those people want to convert
those tapes to DVD. If they are prevented from doing that by law,
there will be a serious consumer backlash.