I offer you a wager of $10 the plaintiffs will not have to pay the legal costs of the defendants.
- Tom johnwillkie wrote:
Without "standing", without "merit", without "a case", they are merely whining in court. They will find it impossible to reform the contracts, and it's important to see who they could have sued, but did not. One CAN own and DOES own a monopoly in a copyright. That's the only monopoly that is working here, and if you are so concerned about the monopoly effects of copyrights, you should publish your Broadcast Engineering columns here before they are published in the magazine. Information wants to be free, right? (And, arguably, your columns, on occasion, do contain information.) This is a cynical and futile attempt that will cause the plaintiffs to pay the legal costs of the defendants. The content creators and distributors "created the problem" by creating their content, and you created the problem by wanting their content, but not delivered the way they want to deliver it. Funny that nobody has ever made a penny in the alternative distro means you favor. Me thinks the defendants actually make money. Why not whine that you can't watch youtube ripoff and samizdat video on your cable system? I guess that might harm the cable system. So much better to whine about the most popular programming on cable, the stuff that many people watch for free, yeah, complain about the free market, and ignore the one that is charging monopoly rents to you. Let me know the exact figure that broadcast tv has cost you over your lifetime. Aside from my former operation of a broadcast tv station, broadcast tv has cost me $0.00 in my lifetime. But, perhaps you are older, and your figure is a bit higher. Maybe $0.01 or less? In the end, it's the content that is king, and -- aside from movies from distant lands and a BBC show here or there, all the other content sucks. Put another way, US media content is king in all continents of the world, save Africa, which favors the sexuality and sensibility of Bollywood films. John Willkie -----Mensaje original----- De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En nombre de Craig Birkmaier Enviado el: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 6:10 AM Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Asunto: [opendtv] Re: Viewers File Suit Over Bundling At 9:57 AM -0700 9/25/07, johnwillkie wrote:Most of the defendants named have little or nothing to do with cable distribution: they're suing the contracts between the programmers and the distros. Not being a party to the contract, they need to attack it on"public policy" grounds, but all the public policies are against them.They are going after the real problem. As I said in other recent messages, the distributors are merely the billing and customer service department for the media oligopolists.You are correct that it would be useless to to attack this via the politicians - these are the guys and gals who created the problem and benefit from the current system.The courts are the only avenue left to consumers, who are not willing to give up their content fix to teach the content oligopoly that the marketplace CAN work.We will see what happens. If they picked the right venue for their suit they stand a good change of getting a ruling in their favor. But it could get sticky on appeal.Regards CraigP.S. In the end it may not matter as technology has a way of bypassing the toll booths that oligopolies erect. ----------------------------------------------------------------------You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
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