TV Networks Say Youre Breaking The Law When You Skip CommercialsMitch Stoltz EFF and Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief supporting Aereo this week. The suits against Dish are a response to the Hopper DVR and its Auto Hop feature, which automatically skips over commercials. According to the networks complaints, the Hopper automatically records eight days worth of prime time programming on the four major networks that subscribers can play back on request. Beginning a few hours after the broadcast, viewers can choose to watch a program sans ads. These suits are yet another in a long and ignominious series of lawsuits by content owners seeking to control the features of personal electronic devices, and to capture for themselves the value of new technologies no matter who invents them. Weve seen this movie before. Most directly, the Dish suits look like a replay of the 2002 suit against DVR maker ReplayTV. The networks sued ReplayTV for copyright infringement based on another automated commercial-skip feature. They claimed that viewers were infringing copyright when they skipped ads during playback, that skipping robs the advertisers, and that ReplayTV should be responsible. Fast forward ten years. The networks are accusing Dish of inducing copyright infringement. Thats a legal theory first created in the record labels case against peer-to-peer software maker Grokster. The problem for the networks is that a technology maker, service, or other middleman cant be held liable for inducing copyright infringement unless their customers are actually infringing. And that means the networks will have to convince a judge that people who record a TV show, and later decide to skip over the commercials during playback, are violating federal law. Dish is fighting back hard, filing its own lawsuit in New York to have its devices ruled legal. Hopefully, the courts wont turn millions of American commercial-skippers into lawbreakers. Please visit Electronic Frontier Foundation to support Internet freedom and privacy. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 