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

[George Nassas]

On 2-Nov-05, at 11:59 AM, Dewey Smolka wrote:

> 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.

The way it was told in the film there are a handful of states, I think 
NY is one, where it is illegal to ship drug paraphernalia. Apparently 
it's a federal crime. Agents posing as customers tried to place orders 
from NY addresses but Chong's company, aware of the law and the 
relevant states, refused to take them. The agents then came by the 
factory in person and placed an extremely large order with a promise to 
return later to pick up the goods. Of course, they didn't. Instead they 
insisted that the bongs be shipped to NY. After months of sitting on 
the order they decided to send it out, mainly to free up space in their 
shipping area. Shortly after that they were raided.

There was some discussion of logic and fairness and things like that 
but in the end the point seemed to be if a powerful interest wants to 
screw you there's generally a way for them to do it. That might apply 
to video too. However...

> 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.

I agree. People are open to measures that are reasonable but DRMing 
everything with a moving part isn't. On the other hand I haven't really 
heard the people against DRM, and I'm one, say what would be OK. If I 
was a movie producer and I had just spent twenty million on a negative 
I'd be pretty unhappy when people started making copies for free. 
Clearly something needs to be done and I'm wondering what people think 
that should be. Relying on the honour system, as we do now, isn't 
working out too good.

- George