MRC%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (Mark Crispin) (03/12/86)
This all leads me to wonder what would happen with this scenario: . I buy a satellite dish . I put an "illegal" descrambler on it and watch all the pay services I want to without paying to receive them on my dish . I continue to pay for those exact same premium services on my cable service The reason for this odd-ball state of affairs is that my cable company charges me much less for the premium services than the premium services would charge me directly as a dish owner. I am quite happy to pay for the programming but not at the excessively high prices they charge dish owners. After all, I am making my own arrangements to get the signal from the bird and eliminating the middleman (technically). Now, suppose HBO et al get word of my little scheme and decide to take me to court. I would argue that I am in fact not engaged in theft of their programming because I am in fact dutifully paying HBO for their programming every month through my cable company. All I'm doing is using an alternative media. I wonder if I would have a case? After all, in the copyright issue it is clear that when you buy a copyright work you are buying a license to use that work and the media the work is carried on is irrelevant (something these legal notices that say "any copying is illegal" misstate). There's nothing illegal about buying an LP or CD and copying it to cassette to play in your car; what is illegal is if you give the cassette to somebody else. -------