Now that's what I call "advocacy"!
Perhaps you've heard of Tivo and ReplayTV, which are digital video recorders? ReplayTV advertised a feature, known as ad-skipping, that (as the name implies) allows users to advance the playback of a recorded show to skip the commercials. This feature got the entertainment industry's knickers in a twist, and in October 2001, a group of entertainment companies sued ReplyTV and SonicBlue, its manufacturer. Sometime after that, Turner Broadcasting, Inc. CEO Jamie Kellner gave an interview with Inside magazine, in which he said: "[T]he 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 obvious stupidity of this statement is stunning -- I have this funny mental picture of the police showing up to arrest me as I come out of the kitchen where I went to get a snack during a commercial break ("Drop the nachos, punk, and come out with your hands up!"). But the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a media watchdog organization, took Kellner's threat seriously [link], and filed a lawsuit on behalf of users of digital video recorder, seeking an injunction against copyright "enforcement" by any media company if the user skips commercials.
Which is where the humorous advocacy comes in. The suit is against all of the major players in the entertainment industry. As is common in complaints, the parties are given a short name for ease-of-use throughout the document. Here, the plaintiffs' lawyer chose to call the defendants the "Entertainment Oligopoly defendants". Not an unfitting name, if you ask me...
Perhaps you've heard of Tivo and ReplayTV, which are digital video recorders? ReplayTV advertised a feature, known as ad-skipping, that (as the name implies) allows users to advance the playback of a recorded show to skip the commercials. This feature got the entertainment industry's knickers in a twist, and in October 2001, a group of entertainment companies sued ReplyTV and SonicBlue, its manufacturer. Sometime after that, Turner Broadcasting, Inc. CEO Jamie Kellner gave an interview with Inside magazine, in which he said: "[T]he 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 obvious stupidity of this statement is stunning -- I have this funny mental picture of the police showing up to arrest me as I come out of the kitchen where I went to get a snack during a commercial break ("Drop the nachos, punk, and come out with your hands up!"). But the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a media watchdog organization, took Kellner's threat seriously [link], and filed a lawsuit on behalf of users of digital video recorder, seeking an injunction against copyright "enforcement" by any media company if the user skips commercials.
Which is where the humorous advocacy comes in. The suit is against all of the major players in the entertainment industry. As is common in complaints, the parties are given a short name for ease-of-use throughout the document. Here, the plaintiffs' lawyer chose to call the defendants the "Entertainment Oligopoly defendants". Not an unfitting name, if you ask me...
posted by Daniel at 11:05 AM
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