Top 10 New Copyright Crimes

An article on the "Top 10 New Copyright Crimes" in LawMeme (at Yale) spins out some ramifications of the extremely broad interpretation of "contract" held by the head of Turner Networks, Jamie Kellner.

[Ad skips are] 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.

As the LawMeme article points out, such views would make turning the channel when a commercial comes on illegal. Luckily, Kellner is at least allowing bathroom breaks.

I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial.

- goto