[mythtv-users] Editing out commercials

[James L. Paul]

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On Friday 19 December 2003 13:29, Myth Man wrote:
> Hello Isaac,
>
> Be careful about this thread.
>
> A Hollywood executive, commenting about a PVR legal case, he stated
> that skipping commercials is "stealing" TV.  He was quoted as saying,
> "But we do make allowances for people who want to go to the bathroom."
>
> Hehehehehehehehehehe

Somewhat OT I think, but here's my 1 cent:

Hah. That was tongue-in-cheek I hope. :) Since television viewers do not have 
a contract with content providers in exchange for watching TV, viewing rights 
to content are limited to licensing, which is exclusively the domain of 
copyright law. As viewers we are not required to watch all, any, or any 
specific portion of television content. We are bound by copyright law in how 
we use or reproduce any content though, requiring us to respect the rights 
reserved for the copyright holders.

Since watching television isn't in the domain of contract law (only copyright 
law) any Hollywood executive that thinks otherwise is confusing the two. A 
television viewer is not required to exchange _anything_ (such as viewing 
commercials) for the right to view TV programs. Some people get confused 
about pay-TV, such as HBO or whatever, but this is an exchange for _license_ 
and nothing more. License to watch some TV is free, and some licenses have a 
fee. Any contract in such cases is an exchange for a license, not an exchange 
for the content itself.

I've read quotes along the lines like the one above, and they both crack me up 
and scare me. How anybody can even imagine that a contract exists between 
television content providers and viewers is beyond me. How somebody can think 
that we are all legally obligated to watch commercials in exchange for the 
program during which they are shown is baffling to me. I can certainly 
understand a desire by the industry that we all watch commercials, and I see 
how the cachflow works to our advantage by keeping a lot of decent content 
available without viewing license fees, but really... To think that the 
absense of license fees constitutes a contract _requiring_ us to view 
commercials to the point of asserting that failure to watch the commercials 
is "stealing." Whew. That's a long trip to an odd planet. ;)

Oh. Disclaimer. IANAL. I'm not even CLOSE to being a lawyer, I'm just a 
copyright and personal rights freak.

By the way, I have an RCA VHS VCR that I bought in 1995ish that skips 
commercials. Does it quite well too. I haven't used it in years now though.

> Friday, December 19, 2003, 6:09:37 PM, you wrote:
>
> IR> On Friday 19 December 2003 05:44 pm, David Rees wrote:
> >> On Fri, December 19, 2003 at 2:05 pm, Chris Petersen wrote:
> >> >> Does that mean that  the commercials are flagged so that I may use an
> >> >> external editor to cut them out?
> >> >
> >> > not external.   hit M while watching the recording, and you'll get
> >> > myth's commercial editor.  In there, if you press Z it'll import the
> >> > commercials into the cutlist, where you'll probably have to adjust
> >> > them a little (commercial detection isn't flawless).
> >>
> >> Is there an official list of keystrokes for each program inside of myth
> >> (eg, MythTV, MythMusic, etc))?  I need to print up a cheatsheet to keep
> >> track of everything!
>
> IR> Run mythweb, go to the settings section, then go to the keybindings
> setup in IR> there.
>
> IR> Isaac
> IR> _______________________________________________
> IR> mythtv-users mailing list
> IR> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> IR> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
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