[mythtv-users] prebuilt pvrs for developers benefit?

Chris Petersen lists at forevermore.net
Tue May 4 15:38:49 EDT 2004


> If I tape it and give it to you, technically that is illegal, but nobody
> really cares.  Same as if I burned you a copy of that CD we listened to
> earlier.  If I mass produce 1000's of copies and give them to people all
> over town, that might be a different story.  That's exactly what you're
> doing when you put a file up on a file sharing network.

With the DMCA, it gets a little more complicated than that, too.  If you
tape a show and give it to a friend (or 100 friends), it's civil
copyright violation (unless you profited from the exchange - more on
this below).  But with the DMCA, if you use a computer to do it (or any
other "digital" device), it automatically becomes a felony copyright
violation.  If you profited from copying a particular work, you've also
left the realm of civil violations.  Recent laws (part of or related to
the DMCA) have also ammended this "profit" (which used to just mean
money) to include other similar goods (which means, if you trade one
burned CD for one from your friend, you've profited from the exchange). 
They use this new law to go after the big "pirate" rings that were just
trading files, but not money - the files themselves became the profit,
and the whole thing moved into the land of criminality.

All of the DRM going into audio files, copy protected CD's, etc proves
that someone DOES care if you burn a single copy of a CD for a friend -
they just have no way to catch you, so they try their best (not enough)
to make sure you can't do it, and then go after the people sharing files
over the internet.

-Chris



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list