Put away HL2 and write your Senator. Unless you want fast-forwarding past commercials to become illegal. Here’s the bill text.
It won’t be long before they strap us into chairs in front of our TVs and pry our eyelids open like in Clockwork Orange!
Seriously, I think skipping ads is a problem the networks need to deal with on their own.
a huge advantage of creating movie backups is that you can take out all those garbage restrictions. no more being forced to watch previews or legal garbage.
Sigh. And this shit is bipartisan.
I sent one of our Senators a letter. Murray’s page reports an error. Dammit.
I fired off a letter to both Murray and Cantwell without problem.
Yeah, that irks me a bit too. The general populace has no strong outrage on this one so both parties are free to step up to the corporate feeding trough.
Technology giveth and technology taketh away. Trying to legislate solutions to rapidly changing technological issues is such a poor idea.
Man, I hate this Senate.
Wait, did I read that right? It’s possible to get three years in jail and a fine for bringing a camera to a movie theater? Yeah, it’s illegal, but isn’t that a bit…excessive?
This is the same crowd that wanted to exempt music companies from punishment for destroying your computer over the network to stop P2P file sharing.
I don’t have issues with legislating against technology that allows you to easily skip the adverts in films recorded from television stations that make their revenue from those very adverts, but to stop you skipping adverts in DVDs that you have purchased is just plain wrong. If they are legislating for that, then it is just evidence of how far the balance of power is shifting away from the consumer to the corporation. Three years in jail for bringing a camera into cinema is just wrong; I can beat up an old woman and rob her of her life savings for less.
So you are in favour of outlawing the VCR?
That’s not what I said. I wouldn’t want VCRs banned, and you can’t conclude that from what I said. However, if someone were to outlaw the technology that allowed VCRs to automatically cut out adverts when recording TV broadcasts, I wouldn’t disagree with it, although I wouldn’t care all that much if it passed either.
What’s next, are they going to make it illegal to get up to go to the bathroom or grab a snack during a commercial break? What about flipping channels during the ads, will that be permitted?
Are they focused at all on whether or not it’s automatic? Possibly commercials will get a digital flag once we’re all on hdtv and no device will ever allow you to fast forward them even on recordings?
Technology that allowed you to flip the channel (thus skipping a commercial) would already be illegal under this, right?
I just wrote both my Senators I hope it has some effect.
– Xaroc