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Old September 12th, 2004, 02:11 PM
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Default Re: US: Stop Congress from making iPod or VCRs ill

Quote:
Imperator Fyron said:
You are misunderstanding the point... only a small number of television stations are actually broadcast... most of them are only available via cable or direct satellite link... Certainly the 9 or so channels that are broadcast through the air are free to use as you want, and it is perfectly legal to do so...
As was mentioned, the BBC assert the right to track down and punish people for decoding signals in their own homes. Satellite TV companies assert similar rights.

I appreciate there are other issues about what people have the right to do with data they get from a cable service or the Internet. I tend to feel similarly about those, and that it's ultimately futile to try to assert that people have no right to receive, decode, record, and even share such data, because technology has advanced to the point that it is just getting more and more trivial to do so. It's akin to telling people they have no right to see, hear, listen, understand, remember, write or talk.

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