[mythtv-users] MS media center

[Chris Petersen]

On 02/26/2010 06:33 PM, Christopher Meredith wrote:
> I'm not giving legal advice, I'm providing legal information. There's
> an important difference. There was some backlash on the Mythbuntu
> forums regarding mc2xml in which it was claimed that mc2xml is
> "illegal" because it violates the TOS for MCE. That simply isn't true
> and that's the point I was making.

It doesn't violate the TOS for MCE.  It violates the TOS for the MCE
data download service.  Huge difference from a legal standpoint, same
effect for the mc2xml user.

Do you take your neighbor's car out for a joy ride if you find the doors
unlocked and keys in the ignition?  It's not stealing if you return it
(even being nice and refilling the gas tank), is it?  Is it wrong?

MS puts up a TOS that says "you cannot connect to this data service with
unauthorized software", but doesn't bother to "lock" the service with
even simple authentication like user agent validation (or maybe they do
-- remember that mc2xml isn't open source).  You're still violating the TOS.

> Yes, and I never said otherwise. Program titles and times are not
> copyrightable but show synopses are. My point was that neither Zap2It
> (remote source) nor Microsoft (immediate source) are the copyright
> holders and since these are the only entities that would even know who
> is accessing the data, the chances of it being a problem are slim to
> zero.

FWIW, Zap2it.com *is* TMS.  They *are* the copyright holders for
most/all of that descriptive data, along with the structure of the xml
format that the data comes in as.

-Chris

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