Bad News From Canada On NetTV And Media Levies 392
twilight30 writes "Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses.
An alternate link to the original at CNet is here."
And Dr Caleb writes "In response to this Slashdot story I emailed my Member of Parlament. He responded to me today to say that "Despite strong opposition by the Canadian Alliance to these and other aspects of the bill, the Minister of Canadian Heritage won the day and Bill C-32 Copyright Legislation is now law." And further to say "The law assumes guilt that everyone who buys a blank tape or CD is pirating music - but anyone who uses CDs for data storage, for instance, knows that's not true!"
Distressing that the bill has passed, but refreshing that my MP 'gets it'!"
makes sense to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame Canada! (Score:4, Insightful)
We should start pirating media via more esoteric mediums, like DLT or mercury delay line, and start doing data backups on VHS, just to fuck with them.
Re:ummm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dashed Hopes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would this dash hopes? All they need to do is obtain permission, if they want to create a 'net TV station. Your local TV station also has to obtain permission before they can broadcast too. They're funded by local advertisements, and so the internet TV would just be funded by banner ads and pop-unders (shivers).
Just a question: Would it be acceptable, according to the definition of 'fair use' to stream movies from your own hard disk so that you could watch them remotely?
Nice self-serving comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Free? Since when is broadcast TV free? I pay for it every time I buy something that is advertised on television, since product sales are how those companies make back ad costs.
So, currently, every time I buy something I'm paying for broadcast TV which, except for PBS and some of the few remaining local stations, is absolute unmitigated crap. I also pay for basic cable, and then pay again for the stuff that's advertised on basic cable; I'm paying to watch ads.
OTOH, in practice I applaud anything that will stop the gradual slide of the Internet towards a broadcast-like, producer/consumer relationship.
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Impied Purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I should be able to redeem my CD-R receipts at a music store for music purchses if I dont use them for musical purposes right?
This all makes me think.
-Foxxz
No big suprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Now for the record, this wouldn't have happened if she didn't have party support, however I must say our Minister of Heritage is a bumbling IDIOT.
Sure, sure... makes sense that we shouldn't be able to rebroadcast TV signal... that's not what I'm arguing. I'm still absolutely LIVID about the CD/Tape tax BULLSHIT.
Shiela Copps rott in hell. Oh and for those of you that have no clue who the "Canadian Alliance" are -- they are the governments official opposition (a political party over here in the great white North).
Anyhow.. my first actual non-anon-coward post in a LONG time...
Mark
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the first thing that crossed my mind when I read this story. The fact that it's combined with the blank recording media levy is disingenuous on the part of the submitter/editor responsible for posting it.
The media levy sucks, but quite honestly I can't find sympathy for companies who want to earn a living on the backs of the work of major networks. For commodity hardware at an expense of no more than $500, I could re-broadcast network television to the Internet. That's just not right.
But hang on ... are we surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The law assumes guilt that everyone who buys a blank tape or CD is pirating music"
Okay, that's NOT true, but the RIAA believes it is and the RIAA is the be-all and end-all unfortunately.
But with DRM and copyright extension laws, etc, everyone who uses a blank tape or CD WILL BE PIRATING whatever they put on the tape/CD, because the way we're heading we won't have the right to create backups/copies of anything except what WE create by ourselves. So backing up your ogg collection (ripped from your copy-protected CDs) may end up being considered "pirating". Making a copy of that software CD because it's starting to get a bit scratched and then having to get a crack to ignore the CD-serial check may be considered pirating. Hell, in the end, using computers for anything but content CREATION may be pirating.
Okay, that's a pretty extremist view, but think about the situation we had 10 or 15 years ago - copy-protection? inability to create legal backups? paying a tax to cover alleged piracy as reported by an organisation that can't count CD burners? Where will it end?
He doesn't really get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But hang on ... are we surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't that shocking that CD sales are being taxed. In 1992, President Bush Sr. signed into law the Audio Home Recording Act, which included royalty payments by digital audio equipment and media manufacturers. So this has actually been reality for some time.
The RIAA is only the be-all and end-all because people don't get off their asses and go vote. It's very simple. Write your congresspeople, senators, etc, and tell them that the RIAA makes you sick. You don't care WHAT the legislation is, you just want to see the RIAA and MPAA eat it. You tell your congressperson that if they vote for anything you remotely interpret as pro-RIAA or pro-MPAA, that you will vote against them in the next election cycle. If you donate to political causes, note that your donations go with your vote. Then follow through. Register, vote against them, and donate to the other guy if he'll pledge to take a stand.
Next time political causes come up, mention the mickey mouse copyright extension act, or the home recording act, and tell other people how congress gets bought off by the music and movie industry, and how they should express their dissatisfaction with their representatives.
There is no blank recording media levy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Misconceptions about how TV works (Score:5, Insightful)
Television isn't free. Every minute of commercial TV is a transaction exactly equivalent to buying a loaf of bread. What people don't seem to get is that the purpose of TV isn't to entertain the masses... the purpose of TV is to sell audiences to sponsors. The sponsors are the consumers; the audience is just part of the product.
Once you understand this, all the seemingly stupid decisions about cancellations and the like become much clearer. OK, they still suck, but at least they're clear.
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Internet TV will help broadcasters in exactly the same way. If more people watch the broadcasters are better off. As far as the problems with local affiliates, there was the same problem with early cable, and it was only solved by regulation; not banning cable.
I'm in a location where I can get 2 channels by broadcast (and I have a cablemodem). For me, broadcast isn't a viable option, but I do have the bandwidth to download a TV stream. I have a satellite dish, so this doesn't affect me much, but if I were limited to broadcast this would make the difference between my watching or not for most of the broadcasters
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
PS. Posting AC, cause I dont respect you enough to log in.
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but it's a democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, it's "lose" not "loose"
Re:makes sense to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm trying to say is that here is a market, an additional area that these supposedly cash strapped networks have known about for years now. This same market has an extremely low cost of entry. As you said $500 for the equipment. It's an area where the networks can do some "value added" services for their customers the "sponsors" and possibly steal away some business from competitors who don't offer the "service". The point really is that instead of the networks themselves jumping into a new growth market, they continue to combat each other over the same demographics in the prime time crowd. They also wait for someone else to make the break into internet broadcasting and yet sue anyone attempting to break in using their content. Right now it's a lose lose situation for the networks because they're too focused on sitting back and waiting for something to happen, for someone else to do something.
Yes there are people out there willing to steal others stuff to make a buck - they learned that behavior from the networks, just take a look at programming. It's just the internet crowd is a little more blatent and a little less defensive about what they do and how they do it.
Re:Legal advice needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is bullshit! (Score:2, Insightful)
But nobody said Sheila Copps has much between her ears.
All we need is a nice card that will pick up the channels from 2 to 100. Many video cards can already do this. This lets any PC become a video recorder/player. The problem is that in the long term - I don't think this is where things are going to go.
Rather I expect P2P networks to become ubiqutous. I expect that a large number of ppl will set up recorders for whatever their favorite shows are and then they will drop them into a P2P system.
Ppl will compress it and encrypt it and P2P systems will share it. If this happens (and it already is) then the broadcasting industry itself will be challenged (read - reworked). Nobody likes their business model anyway. Personally I HATE the commercials so I don't watch TV. The _ONLY_ reason IMHO that the present system functions is because of a virtual monopoly on distribution. If you can control the distribution then you can drop in your commercials. If you lose control of the distribution (which is what P2P does) then nobody will give a damn about broadcast signals. But this will be the NEXT generation doing this - the present under 25 group.
The law may be there but it is unenforcable and who can prove where anything arrives from? This law only limits CANADIAN wannabe rebroadcasters. It doesn't limit USA rebroadcasters and besides - last I checked there IS no valuable Canadian Content anyway... save for hockey games and I personally don't give a damn about hockey.
What they are trying to do aint gonna work. As soon as the bandwidth climbs (DSL is almost too slow for this) the P2P aspects are going to mushroom and it will be from systems like Kaaza where you can't find a server to attack. In fact - We'll soon see if Kaaza can even be attacked as an organization... US courts are after them of course.
When we have terabyte hard drives and hopefully 36" high res monitors then people are NOT going to pay much attention to cable TV.
It will be much simpler to just pull in an MP4 and play it when you want to.
All we need is a well designed opensource P2P system and of course opensource video codecs. So far we don't have these. But the future is a long time and I figure within 5 years it will happen.