Monday, October 7, 2002

Watch commercials. It's your duty.


From LawMeme, the MPAA have asked the judge in the ReplayTV case to name the Electronic Frontier Foundation a competitor, so that the EFF lawyers can be barred from sensitive movie industry documents in the case.



Silly MPAA. The EFF is a political organization. They're not participating in your industry--they're trying to raise awareness of the way its members behave.



For those who have lost count, the ReplayTV case is the one wherein broadcast companies say you're stealing when you skip commercials, because that violates an implicit contract with the broadcaster.



An analogy occured to me today. When I pay my credit card balance in full each month, and thus pay no interest, the credit card company makes no money from me. Does that make me a thief, or just shrewd? Am I morally obliged to let charges accrue?



3 comments:

  1. Yeah, I'm a little leery of this "implicit contract forcing you to do what we want, or would have wanted had we thought about it" bit. It reminds me of the US stance within the UN a little too much. Why has it not come up in the previous fifty years that going to the bathroom during commercials is illegal?

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  2. You get up to go to the bathroom?

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  3. Well, I assume that excretion during commercials is all fine as long as you stay in your seat and keep watching. I tend not to do that, it'd be bad for my couch.

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