GRR. ARGH. (Copyright: A Step-By-Step-Guide)
A step-by-step-guide to How Copyright Actually Affects Viewership, You Assholes:
1. Buy pretty HDD/DVD recorder/player with 160GB memory.
2. Bring recorder home. With great wailing and gnashing of teeth, get recorder/player hooked properly into the stream, in spite of helpful instructions from the manual.
3. Set up recorder. Cheer. Play about recording five seconds of this, five seconds of that, ten seconds of-- wait, what do you mean, "C-P"? Why won't you record? And why does that little light keep flashing orange?
4. Look up "C-P" warning in manual. Assume this is to do with Digital Programming trial. Call Shaw.
5. Get informed by Shaw that the broadcast signal itself, passing through Shaw, contains embedded anti-copy signal that prevents recorder from... well, y'know.
6. Hang up with Shaw. Get on Internet. Discover that, in fact, this is only half-true, and that Shaw recently decided to add decoders to their Digital and HD boxes (like the one you just bought) that allows the copy-protect signal to reach the box, as opposed to the old Digital boxes that ignored them.
6b. Also discover that this is due to fact of original American broadcasters choosing to assume that, rather than the logical conclusion that you just might not be home between 9am and 11pm every single weeknight and want to put that new episode of Slings and Arrows on DVD so you can take it with your laptop to work, you are indeed plotting to make a million copies of Stargate Atlantis and sell them on the Internet. (Which you wouldn't have before, but might do, NOW.)
6c. Fuck you, Sci-Fi.
6c. Fuck you, Warner Brothers.
6d. Fuck you especially, AOL.
7. Assholes.
8. Further wailing and gnashing of teeth.
9. Further queries to the Internet reveal that for $30-40, one can purchase a little box to block the evil signal that does things that aren't actually legal, in this country, anyway. Resolve to become Big Important Pirate, using Shaw's own bandwidth, and send them severed fingers of missing repairmen as a warning. Resolve to buy little box, come morning.
9b. Resolve against latter plan, as pirates, above all, require secrecy.
10. Consider writing angry e-mail to CRTC, Shaw, and all other involved parties, explaining above, and how most people who are a) willing to bother with high-tech PVR devices and Digital programming and b) intelligent enough to know how they're being screwed will almost inevitably a) drop the service like a hot fucking rock and/or b) become so pissed off and vengeful that they will go to ridiculous lengths to bypass the ridiculous, quasi-legal roadblock.
Like, for example, me.
Rinse, repeat.
1. Buy pretty HDD/DVD recorder/player with 160GB memory.
2. Bring recorder home. With great wailing and gnashing of teeth, get recorder/player hooked properly into the stream, in spite of helpful instructions from the manual.
3. Set up recorder. Cheer. Play about recording five seconds of this, five seconds of that, ten seconds of-- wait, what do you mean, "C-P"? Why won't you record? And why does that little light keep flashing orange?
4. Look up "C-P" warning in manual. Assume this is to do with Digital Programming trial. Call Shaw.
5. Get informed by Shaw that the broadcast signal itself, passing through Shaw, contains embedded anti-copy signal that prevents recorder from... well, y'know.
6. Hang up with Shaw. Get on Internet. Discover that, in fact, this is only half-true, and that Shaw recently decided to add decoders to their Digital and HD boxes (like the one you just bought) that allows the copy-protect signal to reach the box, as opposed to the old Digital boxes that ignored them.
6b. Also discover that this is due to fact of original American broadcasters choosing to assume that, rather than the logical conclusion that you just might not be home between 9am and 11pm every single weeknight and want to put that new episode of Slings and Arrows on DVD so you can take it with your laptop to work, you are indeed plotting to make a million copies of Stargate Atlantis and sell them on the Internet. (Which you wouldn't have before, but might do, NOW.)
6c. Fuck you, Sci-Fi.
6c. Fuck you, Warner Brothers.
6d. Fuck you especially, AOL.
7. Assholes.
8. Further wailing and gnashing of teeth.
9. Further queries to the Internet reveal that for $30-40, one can purchase a little box to block the evil signal that does things that aren't actually legal, in this country, anyway. Resolve to become Big Important Pirate, using Shaw's own bandwidth, and send them severed fingers of missing repairmen as a warning. Resolve to buy little box, come morning.
9b. Resolve against latter plan, as pirates, above all, require secrecy.
10. Consider writing angry e-mail to CRTC, Shaw, and all other involved parties, explaining above, and how most people who are a) willing to bother with high-tech PVR devices and Digital programming and b) intelligent enough to know how they're being screwed will almost inevitably a) drop the service like a hot fucking rock and/or b) become so pissed off and vengeful that they will go to ridiculous lengths to bypass the ridiculous, quasi-legal roadblock.
Like, for example, me.
Rinse, repeat.