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Public Knowledge challenges anti- TV piracy efforts

22 February 2005 7:23 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 13 comments

The legal director of digital-rights advocacy group Public Knowledge, Mike Godwin, is challenging the new proposals to stop TV piracy and the claims that are being made by the entertainment industry about TV show downloading on the Internet. He is a fan of the series Huff but unfortunately he missed the season finale episode. So he had a look around the net and found himself a resource to download the episode. It took 7 hours to get the episode using his high speed connection.

As well as taking 7 hours to download the single episode, the quality was also far from perfect. Nevertheless he enjoyed viewing it. "It's a great show," he said. However, he said the low quality, slow download indicated that the rampant piracy of digitized broadcast programs, a threat Hollywood has long warned against, was hardly imminent. The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) believe that this early TV series downloading stage should be stopped before it can start.

The debate will be presented in oral arguments this week before the District of Columbia Circuit for the United States Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by Public Knowledge and others against the FCC, challenging a new regulation that intends to stop TV shows from leaking onto the Internet for everyone to download and share with each other. Public Knowledge maintains that the FCC does not have the power to tell hardware manufacturers how they should build their products.

"This is about whether the FCC is going to become the Federal Computer Commission and the Federal Copyright Commission," said Gigi B. Sohn, the co-founder and president of Public Knowledge. "The FCC does not have the power to tell technology manufacturers how to build their machines." The new regulations would require all new consumer electronics equipment capable of receiving over-the-air digital signals from digital televisions to computers equipped with TV tuner cards to include a broadcast flag that help it determine when content must be protected against copying.

Source:
News.com

Permalink to this article

Appeals court says no to broadcast flag (7 May 2005)

U.S. companies lose billions to Russian Piracy (25 February 2005)

Downloaders pay for movies too (25 February 2005)

Bollywood DVD pirate gets 3 year jail sentence (23 February 2005)

TV show piracy enters spotlight (9 February 2005)

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Discuss this article!
MXGzX (Member) 22 February 2005 8:58
low quality and slow download....well idk where he's been getting his tv from lol [ + quote]
-LoNeR- (Senior Member) 22 February 2005 9:23
lol, i was actually about to say the same thing. he got it with 7 hours and slow quality? man - he obviously doesn't know how to find stuff on the net ;D But seriously now "challenging a new regulation that intends to stop TV shows from leaking onto the Internet for everyone to download and share with each other" they aint never gonna stop that :D [ + quote]
AlanTiger (Junior Member) 22 February 2005 12:12
The HUFF finale cap was terrable quality, most of the rest tho were good [ + quote]
Hrdrk20 (Member) 22 February 2005 14:19
I live in the USA and have never heard of this HUFF program. I'll now have to search for it, download at 100kbs and see what this program is about :) lol [ + quote]
jacsac (Member) 22 February 2005 15:17
If the FCC does this it will just show how money is the only thing politicians are motivated by. I hope that FCC, RIAA, and MPAA go overboard with these type of issues and maybe this outlandishness will be their downfall. Just wishful thinking though. [ + quote]
neewbie (Member) 22 February 2005 17:19
7 hours!!!!!! lmao the show is only 350 meg!!! should take less than an hour.. haha [ + quote]
bzboarder (Member) 22 February 2005 23:43
theyll put and end to TV show sharing like they did to MP3 and movie sharing... oh wait. [ + quote]
neilm247 (Member) 23 February 2005 4:26
Most of this piracy is happening in britain and other places that get their programmes after america. Solution? Release the tv shows at the same time everywhere, then there will be no need to spend "hours" wasting time and download allocation. [ + quote]
Mr_Taz_UK (Senior Member) 23 February 2005 5:14
Attention P2P fans!!! Get yourselves a copy of this book "Steal this file shareing book" from somewhere like Amazon review here http://www.nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=sharing PDF of chapter 2 here http://www.nostarch.com/download/STFB_Chapter_2.pdf Hardened P2P users may think this is all a bit simple, however, many varied and usefull methods are covered later in the book. (What, you think they would let you preview the good stuf.....for free.....) Enjoy you could also use an ISO type HUNT website to find the ebook...maybe :o) BTW afterdawn gets a mention in this book too. Even my cat hates Bill Gates ! [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 23 February 2005 6:27
-LoNeR- (Senior Member) 23 February 2005 8:09
Quote: Most of this piracy is happening in britain and other places that get their programmes after america. Solution? Release the tv shows at the same time everywhere, then there will be no need to spend "hours" wasting time and download allocation. actually i know a lot of people (including myself) that download the episodes & series for collections :D [ + quote]
bzboarder (Member) 23 February 2005 9:05
as do i! i was downloading TV shows years ago, when the average P2P user thought the only good thing you could get was music (and of course porn). long before they were releasing seasons of TV shows onto DVD i had full seasons of southpark and family guy (even the previously unaired episodes... amazing how they get those) [ + quote]
m_towell (Inactive) 24 February 2005 12:17
HAHA - does that mean that they'll start cracking down on the use of video recorders? And, now, the DVD and HD recorders? So it's alright (or they turn a blind eye to it) to record onto video tape and then lend that copy to someone else? HA Come on! P2P is here to stay. No matter what they do, they wont get rid of it. If anything, they'll just push it underground and make it harder for themselves to find! [ + quote]
ddrhazy (Junior Member) 25 February 2005 10:14
Regulation of hardware is impossible. There's plenty of region free dvd players from Taiwan and such and that is supposed to be a preventative measure so people can't play DVD's from other countries. I remember that the same companies were getting into a fit because TiVos were not recording commercials while recording programs. These companies are naive to think that people actually watch commercials when they've recorded the program, oh well. [ + quote]