Dirtside's Journal: ...without the written consent of Major League Baseball!

The ostensible purpose of copyright is to preserve the copyright holder's ability to control how their work is distributed and used, and to allow them the primary financial benefits (if any) of the sale of copies of that work. This latter I usually call "right to profit"; it does not mean "the right to make a profit", but rather "the right to possession of any profits that are made". Just because you have the right to any profits that are made from a work, doesn't guarantee that the work will actually turn a profit!

The broadcast TV networks do exactly what their name implies: They broadcast data into the air, allowing anyone with the proper equipment to receive the data. Does this qualify as giving up control over distribution? Well, let's take a look at what that phrase means, or should mean.

Controlling the distribution of a work essentially means that you control who has access to the work. If you broadcast a work, you have given everyone access to the work. In any meaningful sense, you've given up control over who may access the work.

Given this, let's look at an example broadcast of a random TV show.

I could use my VCR to tape the show during its regular broadcast timeslot. This is legal.

I could have a friend tape the show during its regular broadcast timeslot, and then lend me the tape so that I can make my own copy. This is illegal.

In both cases, I end up with the same data: a copy of the show, commercials intact. (Let's assume they're perfect digital copies, recorded via TiVo or a similar method.) In neither case was any money given to anyone. I did not buy the tape, or keep it; nobody gave any money to XBC for broadcasting it. (That's what the commercials are there for.) Yet, one method is legal, and the other is not. This makes no sense.

Now, the right to profit and the right to control distribution are linked. In Show X's case, they've already (effectively) given up their control over distribution, since they already distributed the show to every person on Earth (and nearby star systems, as well ;)). However, they haven't given up their right to profit from the show. In fact, the profit from their show comes from selling commercial time to advertisers, and that happens before the show even airs. Normally, when you watch the show, you have to sit through the commercials (or, at least, do something else while the commercials are on, but you can't skip past the commercials. And on average, each time you watch a commercial for a product, the company whose commercial you're watching earns some average amount of money. (E.g., if 10 million people each watch a commercial once, and 500,000 of them buy the advertised product (which sells for $10) because of the commercial, then you can reasonably say that each person who watched the commercial earned you 50 cents ($5 million from 10 million people).)

Enter VCRs. Now you can tape the show, then watch it later, and fast-forward through the commercials. At least there, you still get the essence of the commercial -- you'll be able to identify the product, or at least the brand, or at least the category ("Hmm, I think that was a detergent commercial"). Now enter PVRs, like TiVo. Now you can skip past the commercials entirely. You can now watch the show without watching the commercials -- so you're basically getting something for nothing. But that's perfectly legal. But if you get the same data from a friend -- even if you do watch the commercials -- that's illegal. Is that logical?