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Television Media

Multiple ReplayTV Lawsuits Dismissed 152

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lawsuit-society dept.
bluephone writes "News.com.com.com.com... has article about a federal judge dismissing lawsuits brought by 5 users and the EFF over fears of being sued by media corporations. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper stated the suits were moot since media companies agreed not to sue users in August 2003. She also pointed out that the suit brought by media companies against ReplayTV has been dismissed as well."
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Multiple ReplayTV Lawsuits Dismissed More

Multiple ReplayTV Lawsuits Dismissed

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  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NightSpots ( 682462 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @01:14PM (#7963811) Homepage
    Small consumers powerless against large corporations. Film at 11.

  • Because we can... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @01:17PM (#7963844)
    trust them that they will follow what they say. I can remember just not to long ago the US Treasury [slashdot.org] going back on its word. So I fully embrace this because I trust Big Corporate America.

  • Yeah, sure. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @01:20PM (#7963870) Homepage
    So what's to prevent those lawsuits from happening down the road over a slightly different issue?

    Moot. Right. I never thought I'd hear that in our [lawsuit] trigger-happy society.

    Damon,

    • Re:Yeah, sure. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by enrico_suave ( 179651 )
      I guess it's "moot" because they (ReplayTV) removed the features in newer models of ReplayTV that scared the MPAA/etc...

      i.e. IIRC ReplayTV jewer units no longer lets you get content from other replayTV costumers/units over the net. Please correct me if I'm mistaken about that. It *was* a very cool feature, it's a shame that it's not in the newer models.

      FWIW (surprise) I'd rather build my own and have full control over what I can and can't do with my content -- until broadcast flags/other DRM creeps in f
    • So what's to prevent those lawsuits from happening down the road over a slightly different issue?

      Absolutely nothing.

      And that's how it should be. Those lawsuits should be dealt with if/when they happen, not today.
    • if the agreement not to sue is legally binding? And if so, what is this agreement with respect to? (i.e. they will not sue at all, or they will not sue users who exploited one particular avenue of transferring media, or they won't sue if one of their lawyers has indigestion?)
  • we weren't spared the whole O.J. Simpson ordeal. He said he didn't do it, and see how it turned out? hehe

    Oh wait, we can't take the word of suspected criminals, but we believe media companies and their promises. That makes sense.
  • ...were the moots suited?

    logical attempt at humor here, come on now, its early...
  • dismissed ... dismissed .. dismissed

    Replay ....

    :)

  • It's moot. But it will come back. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @01:30PM (#7963950) Homepage
    That's probably the correct decision. It's a case brought by owners of a dead product produced by a defunct company against a third party unlikely to sue them. But it will come back when low-cost PVRs that don't require a subscription service start appearing from China.

    • Re:It's moot. But it will come back. (Score:5, Informative)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @01:39PM (#7964024) Homepage Journal
      Replay's dead? Then how come they still charge me $10 a month for a service they are still actively providing?

      • I think the OP meant that SonicBlue, which made replay when they had commerical skip and internet program sharing, no longer exists. They were the company being sued originally. RePlay was bought by Digital Networks North America (owned by the owners of Denon and Marantz) who now provide the RePlay service. While I guess DNNA would still be liable since they bought RePlay, the fact that they dropped commercial skip and internet sharing probably in the new models makes the issue matter less.

    • Re:It's moot. But it will come back. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JamieF ( 16832 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:20PM (#7964381) Homepage
      Oh yay. I can't wait for the day when my PVR channel guide is kept up to date by the same sort of company that prints documentation on a photocopier and deliberately omits their company name, contact info, and even product model number so you can't actually go to them for support. Excellent.

      I've worked at a PVR company on channel guide functionality, and it's not easy. The amount of data for every single show broadcast on every head end in the US is actually fairly large, and obviously it gets updated a lot. I don't think that an open source approach to maintaining a feed of channel guide data will work until / unless PVRs get a LOT more market penetration. (The data becomes obsolete very quickly, and has to be constantly refreshed, unlike software that you just keep building on.) That's why, for the next few years, somebody is going to have to get paid to provide the channel guide info. That might be your cable or satellite provider, though. A good way to get free channel guide info might be to hack your cable or satellite box, or maybe to just create a gadget that reads it right off the cable TV signal.
      • There is a succesful project (XMLTV?) which gets listings data by parsing various public web sites (such as provided by the networks themselves). It's used by MythTV etc. I do however have reservations about using such a system - I can't believe the data quality is as good as (say) Tivo, and it seems a bit of a liberty. The web site providers will get hit for bandwidth as people use it more.
        • I can't comment on XMLTV's quality vs Tivo, but I can tell you that it is better (more accurate, better data) than the Guide+ feature built into my RCA TV (automatically aquires guide data from the cable signal somehow). I used Guide+ for quite some time after I bought my TV, and it was really great, particularly because I wasn't even aware of the feature when I bought the TV, I only discovered it after I got home. But since then I have built myself a MythTV box, so now I'm using XMLTV's guide data (which g
      • Eventually, we may see a standard fro sending listings over the airwaves.

        Until that time, there's a viable business model here, as long as anyone can provide the listings using an open standard. The owner of the PVR could then choose a listings provider. The listings provider sets up an ISP, with one of the cheaper "premium" telephone numbers. As long as there are several competing provider companies, the prices should stay low, and the service should be reasonably good.
    • Replay is not dead. Replay was bought by a Japanese company that also owns Denon.

      I have a couple Replays and the service has continued uninterupted. They are still making and selling Replays.

      In short, Replay is not dead.

  • They really need to lose the stupid name. News.com.com? It's like a geekier version of the "And then?" gag in Dude, Where's My Car?

  • Article Summary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoodNicsTken ( 688415 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:03PM (#7964217)
    1. Hollywood firms equate skipping commercials to stealing TV 2. Sue Sonic Blue into Bankrupcy 3. Sonic Blue is forced to sell of the business unit 4. New company disables the features 5. Hollywood drops suit so they can use the same tatic against the next firm that dares give consumers fair use rights over content they have paid for. 6. .... (Any Manufactures in China want to step up? )

  • No real problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CelticWhisper ( 601755 ) <celticwhisper@ g m a i l . c om> on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:05PM (#7964235)

    OK, if I read right, the article stated that there were no grounds for the suit because the entertainment studios had pledged not to sue over commercial skipping and sharing, and have so far upheld their promise.

    So it seems to me that no real harm has been done here, despite the knee-jerk reaction to view any EFF endeavours being shot down as a bad thing.

    At least it's good to see that the studios have actually been behaving themselves. And honestly, is the commercial-skipping and file-sharing going to hurt them all that much? So far I get the impression that ReplayTV/TiVo/insert-DVR-of-choice-here is still something of a niche market. At least far more so than PCs, which are far more "dangerous" in terms of piracy, now are.

    • You would consider the fact that a product which enabled fair use, which consnumers loved was sued into bankruptcy/submission a problem?

      Not only that, but the declaritory ruling the EFF was seeking would have clarifyied the entertainment industry's right to do this again. Since it was dismissed, they are free to sue the next one and do this again. Yea, I agree, no harm done here. !?!
      • The company wasn't sued into bankruptcy. It went bankrupt on the merit of its business model.

        For a lawsuit to drive it into bankruptcy, there would have either had to be a judgement or a drop off in sales because of the litigation. Neither of these was the case.

    • Excellent! I guess I'll go and buy a PVR with commercial skipping and sharing. I bet there's lots to choose from!

      Um...

  • features restored (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:13PM (#7964316)
    The real question is, does this mean we get the commercial skip and internet transfer features enabled on the 5xxx (and/or any new) series boxes from Replay, and not just the older 4xxx like I have?

    • Re:features restored (Score:5, Informative)

      by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:51PM (#7964679)

      The 50xx (I have a 5060) still have commercial skip and internet transfer. The 55xx (the current models) don't have it, and probably never will. The lawsuit of the Hollywood studios was dismissed partly because Replay/dnna agreed to drop these features. This lawsuit affects RePlay users who were suing the studios.

      • Apparently, if you use a hard drive image from a 50xx machine on a 55xx machine, it works just as a 50xx machine, with Commercial Skip and Internet Video Sharing.
        It will continue to work unless you set it to restore the factory defaults. I am considering trying this on my 5504 model soon. Just an FYI.
  • Aren't their some VCRs (or other VTRs) that had built in commercial skipping?

    Did I miss lawsuits over that back in the day, or did no one care during the heyday of VTRs?

    I'll post a reply once I find an example, but perhaps someone can back me up on this.
    • Most of those only scan forward for a certain amount of time without having any way of checking to see if what is being displayed is a commercial or not.

      I've used a couple different VCRs that had a skip function. They would fastforward 15-20 seconds (depending on model) and continue playing. Press the button enough times and I'd be through the commercials. Unfortunately, I would usually have to rewind a bit because they would skip right past the resuming of the show.
    • "Aren't their some VCRs (or other VTRs) that had built in commercial skipping?"

      Commercial 'fast-forwarding' would be a better term. It was an imprecise feature, plus the ads were still on TV. This is different from *zap* you're past the commercial.

      I just hope ad skip becomes 'competition' instead of 'litigation'.
  • All new Replay units still have the commercial skip functionality. The only difference is that a very tiny bit of user input is now required to access the feature.
    The old version used to work auto-magically skipping all the commercials with no user input.
    The new version does exactly the same thing, only it requires the user to push a button at the start of every commercial break. Not every commercial mind you, just every 2 to 5+ minute commercial segment. And just one button...
    But that one button is enough to make it the previously-automagic feature a "manual" function. And I suppose no one in the entertainment industry thinks such a feature is worth litigating. After all, it's really nothing more than a FFF (fantastic fast forward). Remember, Replay units never deleted commercials, they just made insert points and skipped them in the video stream, you could always go back and watch them if you liked.
    Since the new version is little more than a manual FFF, I gather the entertainment industry would have very hard time trying to prove in court that the all-too-similar Fast Forward on VCR's has been illegal all this time.

    • Re:Fast Forward isn't illegal, just Auto Fast Forw (Score:5, Informative)

      by Buran ( 150348 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @02:33PM (#7964495)
      TiVo has 30-second skip as well, though it's an "easter egg" that requires a sequence of button pushes that isn't in the official docs anywhere. It also disables itself whenever the unit upgrades its OS. Mine did this last week but the 30-sec skip re-enabled with no trouble (once I punched it in right, anyway!).

      According to at least one TV exec, I'm stealing by doing this because I don't see their ads ...

      • Actually... (Score:4, Informative)

        by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @03:21PM (#7964896) Homepage
        Actually, this had nothing to do with the 30 second QuickSkip, but with ReplayTV's "Commercial Advance" feature that automatically "sensed" commercial breaks, encoded that data along with the recorded show, and then let the viewer optionally "elimintate" (in theory) all commercial breaks. The networks didn't seem too upset that you could skip blocks of time or fast forward--people still sometimes view commercials and even forget to skip. It's the non-interactive, automatic Commercial Advance feature that they were up in arms about.

        • Yep. It's just amusing that they can get persnickety about the difference between pushing one lousy button and not doing so. Only in America...
      • The way I justify this is I think cable TV should be free as long as they want to advertise on it. If I'm paying for it they are stealing my time and should be forced to pay me for it. My time is far more expensive than the cost of cable TV.
        • They're not just stealing from you in obvious ways, it's the non-obvious ones that are more insidious.

          It's irritating that they're removing stuff we want to see (show content) and putting in more ads (crap). The average amount of time spent on actual show has gone down and the number of ads has gone up.

          Aren't they stealing from us, their customers, by doing this? And aren't they stomping on the "works" created by "content creators" -- namely, the directors and cast members and crew? Where's the lawsuits a
      • TiVo has 30-second skip as well

        Yes, ReplayTV has time-based FWD and REV buttons, but this is a seperate function that intelligently skips forward past entire blocks of commercials until it finds the beginning of the next show segment.

        Sometimes it works very well, sometimes it just skips until a station identifier. But it usually beats the fixed-time skip button.

        I have one of the older ReplayTVs that has the auto (ie, no button) skip feature as well, so it's nice to be able to choose from three way
        • On the other hand, TiVo has never sold boxes that were labeled as including service and then gone and deactivated boxes that were legally bought with the understanding that they included service...

          Though even before all that, I knew I wanted a TiVo, commercial skip or not, based on personal experience with both boxes. Some models of ReplayTV don't work too well with closed captioning, for example, and the captions vanish until the box is hard-rebooted, for example. And I liked TiVo more overall, including
      • If I cover my ears & eyes for 30 seconds while commercials are on, is it considered stealing?
    • I have a Replay 55xx and the new "manual commercial advance" (called Show|Nav) is not quite the same thing as CA (commercial advance, for 50xx). For once thing, for broadcast shows, it never gets the segments right, and skipping forward often skips to the start of the next commercial break! Now, I've not tried a 50xx unit with CA with the same sort of shows, but if the feature worked like this, I don't think Hollywood would mind.

      The 55xx are physically the same as the 50xx models, except the 50xx models

    • Re:Fast Forward isn't illegal, just Auto Fast Forw (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TwistedSquare ( 650445 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @03:12PM (#7964846) Homepage
      I have always thought that all that this debate surrounding skipping ads will just cause a change in the business model for TV ads. If people are going to skip the ads, I figure there are a few options - display them while the actual program is running (not popular, and can be disabled by image processing hardware), shift towards product placements (which has been happening the past few years), or start charging proper subscription to channels. The last option makes the most business sense, but that would force TV companies to make TV that people actively want to watch, a pretty tricky business. I wouldn't want to be a broadcaster at the moment.

  • DVArchive? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joeytsai ( 49613 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @03:11PM (#7964840) Homepage
    If you own a ReplayTV, you know the killer feature for it is DVArchive. (sourceforge site [sf.net])

    However, I'm rather concerned about it. The website, although hosted on sourceforge offers no source code and repeated attempts to contact the author have been ignored. He's allegedly planning a rewrite of some kind, which is fine, I just want the source for the older version.

    Is anyone a developer for DVArchive or have access to the source? This is not at all an insult to DVArchive or its developers, it's a great program, but in compliance of its license, I'd really like to see the source code.

    • Re:DVArchive? (Score:3, Informative)

      by GizmoToy ( 450886 )
      You are looking for Gerry, the developer of DVarchive. If you want to get in touch with him, I recommend heading over to the ReplayTV section of the AVSforum [avsforum.com]. He posts regularly there with updates on the newest DVarchive versions.

      While he gives the program away, I seem to remember him preffering to keep the code to himself. Couldn't hurt to ask...
    • I sent him an email yesterday for just such a purpose as asking about access to either source code or documentation on how to access the ReplayTV system if I were to work on another application, and am still hoping for a reply. I think ReplayTV integration with something like MythTV could be an incredible addition to the MythTV add-in suite.

      DVArchive is a great bit of software, and thanks to it being written in Java it serves quite well as a multi-platform tool. But there just don't seem to be a lot of u

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