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Senate's new bill may criminalize the fast forward button

Given today's news about TiVo's ads on the fast forward, I can see why they were trying to appease the content industries. Wired News has a writeup about a new crazy copyright bill that throws a bit about skipping commercials in with a ton of other new anti-P2P laws:

However, under the proposed language, viewers would not be allowed to use software or devices to skip commericals or promotional announcements "that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture," like the previews on a DVD.

So the movie industry is doing everything they can to keep people from missing their ads during films. It'd suck to see future DVD players and PVRs that had to disable FF features when a film is playing. There's nothing about it at the EFF right now, but I suspect they'll have lots to say about this soon.

by Matt Haughey November 17, 2004 in News

Comments

Are people really this cowed? I hope this lasts long enough/ goes far enough to blow up in the face of any legislator who votes for it. Any Supreme Court that would let such a thing stand should be raped by the Ghost of Teddy Roosevelt.

Posted by: Tom Clancy at Nov 17, 2004 8:30:54 AM

I interpret the anti-ad-skipping language, as it's currently laid out in the bill, to only have application where somebody is trying to take advantage of the newly created legal safe harbor for the use of the anti-violence/sex technologies (the DVD-chopping machines that that have gotten Hollywood into a tizzy). If one is not using the anti-violence technology in the first place, the anti-ad-skipping language has no application. (IN OTHER WORDS, this bill does NOT blanket criminalize the use of the fast-forward button. The bill may [stink] for other reasons, but that's not one of them.)

(Of course if TIVO should decide to add anti-violence technology to its machines, all bets are off.)

Posted by: Michael at Nov 17, 2004 9:15:34 AM

If I mute, or worse, TURN OFF my TV during the required-by-law mandatory commercial I must view am I subject to going to jail?

Posted by: Mike Easter at Nov 18, 2004 6:56:45 AM

Will this also be put into new DVDs that are purchased so that we can't skip past the previews for new/upcoming movies and get right to the menu, like they do now for the FBI warning? Geez. What a crock of crap.

Posted by: Mike Strock at Nov 18, 2004 1:29:02 PM

Looks like the fastforward part was dropped...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041122/pl_nm/media_copyright_dc

Posted by: Twosox at Nov 22, 2004 8:21:03 AM

I don't think theres any way possible to get rid of the FF feature in future dvd's, if they want to make people watch the ad's theres plenty more sensible ways to do this like dissabling all functions when the ad's start untill the end of the ad's sort of like video games where the intro starts and your pushin buttons to skip but nothing happens and you have to sit through the intro.

Posted by: Stonehaven at Feb 7, 2005 8:37:46 AM