[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #4752: Add R5000 STB Support to MythTV

Stuart Morgan stuart at tase.co.uk
Fri Jul 17 14:48:48 UTC 2009


On Friday 17 Jul 2009 14:48:27 MythTV wrote:
>  Oh FGS danielk, you haven't done any 'digging'.  You are just frightened
>  of what you don't understand.  This is a -religious- issue for you and
>  other devs.

It's not religious, it's about morality and a respect for the law? Where does 
this entitlement attitude come from? It's big business, so it's ok to steal, 
screw them over or break the law?

Do I like that these companies wish to restrict how I view the content I have 
paid for? No, but those are the terms you agreed to when you signed the 
contract.

>  Are you not aware that auto commercial skip (which is built-in to MythTV)
>  is ostensibly illegal? Yes, ReplayTV was actually sued for this.

ReplayTV were indicted in a criminal court? Being sued in civil court is not 
quite the same thing as something being illegal e.g. violating criminal law 
(DCMA) etc.

If there were a line to be drawn then commercial flagging falls decidedly on 
one side whereas hacking a STB would be on the other. I'd feel fairly 
confident of defending commercial flagging in a court of law (regardless of 
the ReplayTV verdict) because choosing to ignore adverts is not a violation of 
any law or ToS which I have agreed to.

>  And are you not aware that whenever Big Media doesn't like something, they
>  always, always send a cease and desist giving plenty of time for the
>  'offensive' function to be removed, before any legal action is even
>  considered?

Ah, It's ok, just so long as they don't notice.

>  And are you not aware that a number of very large corporations are selling
>  this very function?   Hauppauge has sold millions of HD-PVRs.

HD-PVR does not require modification of hardware to bypass efforts made by the 
companies to protect their content? You need active component outputs on a STB 
to use the HD-PVR which amounts to implicit consent, this is not the case with 
the R5000.

>  And SageTV and MediaCenter have had R5000 functionality BUILT IN FOREVER,
>  without Big Media's permission.  No different than MythTV R5000
>  functionality.  These are big corporations who have the legal expertise to
>  actually understand the issues.

>  Your fears are further proof to me  that innovation in MythTV is dead.  I
>  look forward to XBMC.

Just what is your definition of innovation? Innovation == Something that other 
media centres have "built in forever"? Innovation == Aiding illegal activity?

The developers of MythTV don't just object to additions such as a bit-torrent 
client or Hulu integration because we're afraid of being sued/arrested, we 
actually object because these things are WRONG. Somewhere in the last decade a 
whole generation of people lost their sense of right and wrong - it's ok to 
hack a cable STB, it's ok to download pirated music and video and it's ok to 
get angry when software developers take a stand against it? What the hell?!?
-- 
Stuart Morgan


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