[mythtv-users] Zap2it Labs Shutting Down?

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Wed Jun 20 17:02:39 UTC 2007


Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 10:00 -0400, Michael Jones wrote:
>> At $500/month, or $6000 a year it would require 1200 subscribers
>> paying $5 year to break even... 
> 
> Hrm.  Something tells me that it's really not this simple.  Surely the
> TMS bean counters have come to the conclusion that the number of users
> the data satisfies is relative to it's worth.
> 
> Surely they have not missed the boat on the fact that a national
> newspaper like USA Today or The NY Times satisfies a much bigger
> subscriber base than a small 500 subscriber newspaper.
> 
> Surely they have not ignored the "per seat" model than almost everyone
> selling a single reproducible copy of something is using.
> 
> Maybe I'm wrong, but the basic greedy nature of mankind and corporation
> makes me think I am right.
> 
> But let's suppose somebody does set up an amicable (to both TMS and
> subscriber base) agreement to collect subscriber fees and pay TMS.
> What's to stop the same abuse that is going on currently from
> continuing?  How is this "somebody" going to curb it any better than
> Zap2It could?  Surely license (from TMS) to the data does not include
> the right for the licencee to allow re-distribution by it's customers.
> 
> So now not only will this "somebody" need to collect enough to pay for
> it's license to TMS, they will have to collect enough to build up a
> legal fund to prosecute the abusers.
> 
> One can see why Zap2It wants to stop dealing with consumers.

I think its clear that the DataDirect side of things is a minor sideline 
and is not given the resources to track down and cut off the abusers. 
Doing that is not impossible.
Actually finding the proxy source is probably the hardest part. Once the 
proxy is found there are a number of ways of identifing which account is 
being used for that data. The most technically difficult would involve 
spiking known wrong data into suspected streams and seeing if that same 
wrong data appeared on the proxy source...then cut off the source 
account. But it does take some time and effort. And Zap2It has been 
force to give up that fight by the boss.
Maybe they will reconsider if they are aware that there is a market for 
this information on an individual level.
And maybe they could do with some technical assistance on finding and 
cutting off the bad guys. Staring with who they are.


              R. Geoffrey Newbury			


        Helping with the HTTP issue
<a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/">HTTP</a>


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