BF2S Forums If I pay for a channel does that give me the right to watch it

I would guess that it varies from country to country.

I think it is probably illegal to record a TV show for anything other than "personal use". It's definitely illegal to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission.

So in downloading tv shows illegally ... you are downloading illegal content.

Another thought: You pay for the broadcast, not an "on demand" service (which illegally downloading shows, to watch in your own time could equate to).

Probably not...  You paid for the service, not the shows they show on it.  It seems stupid, but that's my understanding of it.

Besides, you get into trouble with distributing the material...which a subscription service probably does not allow you to do.

Get a DVR.

A bit of an aside here but I got stung for the TV licence fee today (which no one ever pays) and I intend writing to the State broadcaster every day until they put some decent fucking programs on!

In Ireland it's legally mandatory to pay for a TV licence, even though the money is distributed to only 2 channels and their associated radio stations. Unlike the BBC in Britain, the Irish State broadcaster still bombards you with ads! It's ridiculous, they get tax payers' money, which enables them to outbid the private networks for content, which in turn increases the value of their advertising slots, which gives them more money to outbid competitors, and so on...

Download the shows for free. Fuck them.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

I'm not distributing the material.. I'm doing nothing other then watching it on something else,

A lot of filesharing programs make you share while you download.  Unless you can find somewhere to leech from...then no one will ever know, right?

From my personal experience...
I got nailed with nastygram from some TV studio once for downloading Sex and the City for my girlfriend--BitTorrent/eMule were sharing the files while I downloaded them...and while I also subscribed to HBO (but had no access to DVR/OnDemand/etc...), they didn't seem to care when they were threatening to sue me. 

Now, keep in mind--when you subscribe to the channel, that gives you the right to space shift and time shift whatever it is that you can record from the channel itself.  This is what media PCs and DVRs and whatnot do, and it is generally considered legal.  What you propose is not that.  You want the convenience of the DVDs of the show without having bothered to record it or watch it when it was aired on the channel originally.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

You can't legally own any copy of their content that you didn't pay for.  I know the DMCA bars you from legally owning a copy of something in a different media format than what you payed for (for instance, you can't buy a low-res dvd then d/l the blu-ray version for free and claim you paid for the content, not the medium).

What is particularly irritating about the DMCA is the "if it's encrypted, it's a crime to break it" clause.  I can't legally space shift my DVD collection, since they are encrypted with the laughable CSS.  Not that anyone would know if you only backed up the DVDs for your own use...but that also bars the development of programs usable for that purpose in the US.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

Hmmm I did state that I was not going to Down Load the program. I watch it through streaming website, which means I hold no ownership to any of the files and it's not on my PC.

I'd also cancell the channel if I got DVR because there's a monthy rental fee for that service and I'd pay that instead of for the Premium channel that I only use to watch one or two shows of..

Also Vios doesn't offer the Ondemand feature inless you pay for it, also the thing that pisses me off about Vios is you don't get free HD programing and you can't Rent HD movies for the fee.

I watch TV but I'm not going to go crazy paying for all the fees to get everything.

Not to be picky, but...

cpt.fass1 wrote:

I'm not distributing the material.. I'm doing nothing other then watching it on something else,

That does not say you are streaming from a website.  If you are happy with watching it there, then go ahead and watch it there.  You more than likely won't get into any trouble UNLESS you are distributing.  That was part of my point.  The other part of my point was that IF you used a P2P program to download the shows, then you COULD be distributing unwittingly.  That was just a warning, but since it doesn't apply to you, oh well.  I was too verbose then.

No, it does not. The rights to the media belong to the owner, who grants the operator the right to provide the content to its customers via specific channels. Large media owners NEVER grant any distribution rights on any channels other than those explicitly paid for by the operator. That means that the /only/ content that you have the right to consume is the content sold to your operator, and broadcast /by/ your operator.

It would probably come down to your channel fee being lisence to watch the show at the times specified in the programming schedule, or through approved recording/playback devices.