[mythtv-users] CommFlag

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Thu Jun 15 16:20:15 UTC 2006


On Jun 15, 2006, at 10:09 AM, Axel Thimm wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 08:52:39PM -0400, Jeff Voight wrote:
>> I read with interest that Mythtv had been accepted to Google's  
>> Summer of
>> Code.
>>
>> However, I have a legal issue.
>>
>> See, commercial skipping could be seen as stealing content from the
>> providers that put this programming into your home. They pay for  
>> it with
>> those commercials.
>
> IANAL, and this is anyhow somehow out of place on the ATrpms' lists,
> so I'm redirecting the follow-ups, but IMHO a filter for commercials
> breaks no law. Just like you're free to zap to another channel during
> the commerical break, you're also free to not record the commercials,
> or remove them from the recording, either manually or aided by a
> machine.

I read someplace that ReplayTV was sued over the commercial skip  
feature, and that they "lost", but I have no real information on  
that, it may be apocryphal.

If anybody knows the details of that case I'm sure it would be of  
interest to this group.

But I agree, you certainly have the right to visit the loo during a  
commercial break, or even during the boring parts of the program.

Though I have heard the that the RIAA is trying to prevent  
"disaggregation" of radio recordings, by which they apparently mean  
they do not want you to record three songs and then store just one of  
them. I would hope this mater will get nowhere.

Of course if you were to try and sell recordings, with or without  
commercials, you might be in trouble.

There was even a case many years ago of Canadian cable operators  
deleting commercials from American broadcasts picked up off-air from  
across the border, and inserting their own spots in their place. I  
believe the Canadian courts decided that no Canadian law was being  
broken, but the matter was settled quietly and the practice  
discontinued.


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list