Blu-Ray and Linux

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

"Nadav Har'El" <nyh at math.technion.ac.il> writes:

> "Time shifting" is legal fair use, as determined in the famous Betamax court
> case (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_shifting).
> So if you pay for cable TV, you're free to record anything, and watch it
> any time later on any device.

OK, let's accept that as a working legal hypothesis.

> Now, Bittorrent lets you pretend you *did* record everything that ever
> aired. Pretend you invented the Internet 20 years ago, with the sole
> purpose of recording for you - on other people's hard disks - every
> program that ever aired. Just because you ran out of Betamax tapes.

Eh, I think that the problem is copying/sharing. You can record a 10
year old Dr. Who but you cannot give out copies of the recording to
others. Even if they have had cable TV for 20 yars and *could* have
recorded Dr. Who 10 years ago themselves, but didn't.

What am I missing in your theory?

IANAL, etc., etc.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org