[mythtv-users] Switching away from comcast to online streams

[John Morris]

On Mon, 2014-01-27 at 10:39 -0500, Stephen P. Villano wrote:

> That is rather my take on the rant as well. A case of, "I don't like the
> law, so I'll ignore the law".
> One, that makes for a rather lousy society.

I can understand the reluctance to get too deep into legally
questionable subject matter.  But as far as Hollywierd is concerned we
will never be 'legit' until we suck it up and settle for the crappy
cable company DVR and the full set of locks and realtime monitoring.

Yea the current legal regime does erode society and the whole concept of
law.  But we live in insane times so we must sometimes embrace the
madness.  After a decade or so of committing a 'felony' every time I
stick a DVD into a drive and watch it there just isn't much guilt over
it anymore.  It's my darned dvd, my dvd drive, my PC and the software
was freely given away by the author.  But every time I load up a new PC
or reinstall, installing libdvdcss is a crime.  And yet I do it, bet you
do too.  Or are you asserting that dpkg --status libdvdcss2 or rpm -q
libdvdcss would return an error on all of your systems?

Know what else?  I currently have to pay Suddenlink for a half dozen
channels I can't actually watch.  (TBS, TVLAND, OXYGEN, CHILLER, SYFY,
one of the FOX sports channels, etc.) If I found a website that let me
download a workaround for that I'd probably install that one too.  And
feel zero guilt.  And if it were good enough to let me subscribe to HBO,
I'd probably give Suddenlink a bit more of my money.  I don't want to
steal the programming, I do want to be able to watch it after I buy it.
Which is the situation most of us find ourselves in.

Searching for workarounds leads many to the dark side though, because
TPB and Usenet have the same content as the cable company.... with a lot
fewer hoops to jump through.  Cheaper combined with less hassle is a
powerful inducement to go to the dark side.  Legal can't be cheaper so
they really should at least be trying to be easier.  Look what
widespread, cheap, unemcumbered and legal mp3/iTunes did for music
copyright violation.
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