Daily Archives: May 2, 2002

Because of the ad skips…. It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming…The question’s whether these are going to be head-end-based models or in-home models and whether ultimately there’s going to be a license required for use of the copyrighted material, or whether people make a bet the Betamax case can cover this usage. My bet would be the Betamax case is not going to cover this usage. What was a highly questionable decision with the new technology will not stand up to the potential of the digital world. Whether there’s going to be a challenge or whether it’s going to be legislation, there’s going to be some way in the digital world that we can protect copywritten material. I think that that’s inevitable. – Jamie Kellner

Creating a program that changes the value of a bit from 1 to 0 has been argued to be a violation of the DMCA.

Russell McOrmond wrote me today to direct me to some new resources relating to the dispute between the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and the Canadian Library of Parliament . I seem to have misunderstood the situation originally . The library not only had not purchased a new system yet, but continues to lease a system, violating the CCIT ruling, which does meet the necessary requirements.