[mythtv-users] Mythtv torrent downloading

[Joe Votour]

--- Michael Starks <mythtv at michaelstarks.com> wrote:

> Chris Pinkham wrote:
> > Please take this discussion elsewhere.  Isaac and
> the rest of the
> > MythTV developers do not condone this activity and
> don't want it
> > discussed on the Myth mailing lists.
> 
> Torrents are not illegal. And certainly speech about
> this kind of 
> technology is not illegal in any country I know of. 
> The real shame is 
> the fear the **AAs have managed to instill in
> people.  I can understand 
> not wanting to officially support any kind of
> peer-peer to keep the 
> project away from any lawsuits, valid or not, but
> when people are afraid 
> to even discuss it we've all been DRMed.
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> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 

You're right.  Torrents are not illegal.  I use
BitTorrent technology to fetch the latest copy of
Fedora Core when it's out so that I can use it to
build my MythTV machine.

That said, there are some factors which lead to why we
don't want discussion of torrents on this list. 
Please keep in mind that many of the MythTV
developers, and the hosting of the MythTV project is
done within the United States, so I am basing my
messages from the United States point of view.  (Note:
I am a Canadian living in the United States, been here
for almost seven years now, so I do know the USA "way
of life".)

1. The public perception of torrents
The public in general associate torrents with, "dirty
little hackers who are stealing everything that's not
locked down".  I only wish I could say that this is
not true - the unfortunate fact is that many people do
use BitTorrent for sharing copyrighted works without
permission, which in the United States is called
"copyright infringement".  It leads to some rather
stiff penalties of a criminal nature here in the
United States (because of lobbyists pushing for
copyright infringment to be a criminal offense, rather
than a civil offense like it should be).  Stiff
penalties to the tune of hundreds of thousands of
dollars per infraction, plus potential jail time.

2. Public perception of MythTV
While we as the MythTV community (mostly) understand
the issues, many people do not.  Therefore we'd rather
not have the negative stigma of BitTorrent associated
with MythTV.  It just continues to feed the fire of
people thinking that BitTorrent is used only by people
who want to copy content illegally.  If this image is
placed on MythTV, then we get even more scrutiny,
which leads me to...

3. Software licenses/patents
Yes, MythTV depends on LAME and other libraries which
are not really legally usable in the United States
without paying license fees/royalties.  This may not
be a problem in "free-er" (not really a word, but I
digress) countries, but for the developers and users
of MythTV in the United States, we must worry about
this.

4. DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)
This is a nasty little law that was passed in the
United States - and is apparently spreading to many
other countries.  People who violate copyright, or are
judged to be making devices/software that can be used
to do so, are judged to be evil in the worst way. 
Jail time and big fines.

5. The legal system and its' costs
The United States (particularly California where I
live) is probably the most "sue-happy" country in the
world.  You can sue somebody because you don't like
the color of their hair.  (Okay, this is a bit of an
exaggeration, but you could likely tie somebody up
with this kind of litigation).

I'm a software engineer (I feel dirty using that word,
but it's what my business card says) by trade.  I've
contributed a few patches to MythTV over the last
couple of years.  Now imagine that I put something in
MythTV that could be used for copyright violation.  I
could be sued - and even if you're right, defending
yourself is an expensive proposition.  I could likely
lose my job (California is a state where you can be
fired for no cause).  I'd lose my car, most of my
personal possessions, etc.  I don't want to go throgh
that.

So, to sum up my rant - although I'm not a main
contributor to MythTV, I am a contributor, as many of
us are here.  MythTV is the best PVR package that I
have found thus far, including the Windows-based
solutions.  Because of that, it is in my best
interests to make sure that the project continues.

Issac as being the creator and maintainer of the
project has the most to gain, and the most to lose.  I
agree with his point of view on this.  Unless you'd
like to put $1,000,000 USD (and that might be light)
in a trust to defend him and the other MythTV
developers if somebody comes knocking on the door.

Finally - AFAIK, Issac pays for the hosting and for
the mailing list himself (and possibly gets some
donations, I don't know).  Because of that, Issac gets
to set the rules.  If you don't like that, then open
up your own mailing list and discuss whatever you'd
like there.

-- Joe

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