Posted on 05/02/2002 6:45:29 AM PDT by Grig
It was inevitable. The broadcast industry is now describing people who skip over commercials as thieves! And with new technology like HDTV and insane laws such as the DMCA, they may very well make it stick in the future.
Jamie Kellner is the chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, which encompasses everything from CNN to TNT and is a part of AOL Time Warner. On Monday, an interview with Kellner appeared in CableWorld.
In response to a question on why personal video recorders (PVR's) were bad for the industry, Kellner responded: "Because of the ad skips.... It's 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."
While most programming on American TV is so insultingly bad that nobody would ever need to steal it in the first place, there is great danger in permitting this line of reasoning to become accepted. If this is seen as a "problem," expect legislation forbidding any device that allows consumers to skip the sacred commercial. Kellner, however, is not completely unreasonable. When asked if he considers people who go to the bathroom during a commercial to be thieves, he responded: "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." Heaven forbid.
The text of the entire interview can be found at http://www.inside.com/product/product.asp?entity=CableWorld&pf_ID=7A2ACA71-FAAD-41FC-A100-0B8A11C30373.
If it works as advertised, the courts allow it. You can already be forced to give blood, DNA, hair, and blow into a breathalyzer in order to incriminate yourself, so they'll allow it in with the same logic.
Then, instead of adversarial trials, they'll just strap your a** to the machine right after arresting you. And then they'll either release you or proceed directly to the sentencing phase.
Look on the bright side, though - there'll be a lot fewer scummy defense lawyers in the world ;)
Does it really matter? ;)
No remote control, no looking away, no turning off the set for at least an hour. And may God have mercy on his soul.
Bigger prisons? But who will guard them when everyone is IN them?
However, it also means that the murderers, thieves, and rapists will NOT want to be caught.
I sure hope they don't ban refrigerators.
You know, it gets more and more clear that the TV is truly meant to be a flower pot. Turn it off, stop feeding these beasts.
patent
Of course you'll also be required to have your tv hardwired to the electrical circuit so that you can't unplug it. Not to mention that it's possible to trip the breaker so there should be a lock on your breaker box or fuse box. Turner should be the only one with a key to the box.
I've got news for Turner and his ilk. Since they are bombarding my house with their radio waves, they are actually trespassing. When those signals are in my house, I'll do any damn thing I want with them. If he could figure a way to keep them out of my house and I then run a cable down to the broadcast station--that would be stealing. If I have cable tv or DirectTV then I am paying for the programming and my contract certainly doesn't require me to watch the commercials.
Next thing you know, he'll be telling us that we're required to watch Oxygen (or is that (O)xygen?... beats the hell out of me).
-PJ
No. It's not stealing. It's "income redistribution", Ted.
Two things occur to me.
1) As I understand the technology, it is entire "non-invasive." It simply senses the subtle electromagnetics of a person's brain working, and deductions are made from that. I'm not sure I could think of a good reason not to use it. It's doesn't hurt anyone, it's not torture, and, assuming there is a way to filter out false-positives, why not?
2) However, the reverse of this technology has also been in use for some time.
Over a scratchy speaker, a researcher announces, "Jack, one of your electrodes is loose, we're coming in." The 500-pound steel door of the experimental chamber opens with a heavy whoosh; two technicians wearing white lab coats march in. They remove the Ping-Pong-ball halves taped over my eyes and carefully lift a yellow motorcycle helmet that's been retrofitted with electromagnetic field-emitting solenoids on the sides, aimed directly at my temples. Above the left hemisphere of my 42-year-old male brain, they locate the dangling electrode, needed to measure and track my brain waves. The researchers slather more conducting cream into the graying wisps of my red hair and press the securing tape hard into my scalp.So here's the rub as I see it. If a real criminal can be "induced" to remember & re-experience a crime IN HIS/HER MIND and those electromagnetic patterns are recorded, then, by someone devious, those electromagnetic patterns can be played back to an innocent mind using a Persinger-type device.
After restoring everything to its proper working position, the techies exit, and I'm left sitting inside the utterly silent, utterly black vault. A few commands are typed into a computer outside the chamber, and selected electromagnetic fields begin gently thrumming my brain's temporal lobes. The fields are no more intense than what you'd get as by-product from an ordinary blow-dryer, but what's coming is anything but ordinary. My lobes are about to be bathed with precise wavelength patterns that are supposed to affect my mind in a stunning way, artificially inducing the sensation that I am seeing God...
[Michael Persinger has a vision ]
Even if that innocent person is, say, not himself fooled by the recording "placed" into his brain, would his brain then be sufficiently altered to cause a false-positive on the detection device?
These two technologies -- the recorder and the playback mechanisms -- provide bad guys with a perfect tool for creating some pretty convincing criminals...
Mark W.
No, they are scared to death.
So that's how AOL-Time Warner lost $54 BILLION last quarter.
"We stole it from them," TheRightGuy said, laughing all the way to the bank.
Let us suppose that every house hold in america got Tivo tomorrow, and nobody watched a single ad. TV other than HBO type channels would be radically altered.
Most people want to watch live events live however, so tivo or no, there still will be commercials being watched. However if 50% less eyeballs are looking at each ad, then the ad companies will only pony up half the money. In actuality, it will be bad enough in a real life situation.
The exact demographic that the advertisers are trying to reach (upwardly mobile 18-34 year olds) are the people who will be early adopters of Tivo. When the only people watching commercials for Mercedes Benz cars are social security collectors and poor folks, Mercedes will put their ad dollars elsewhere.
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