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Originally Posted by robert bartsch
None of these articles mentioned copywrite laws or more accurately
policy conventions (e.g., equipment designed to prevent copying or storage) but they did encourage folks to buy machines with fast chips and huge HDs. Since I have had a DVR with a small HD for months now, I naturally assumed the magazine article advice on HD storage was made so you could record HD programming from cable boxes, rented DVDs, and other sources on your PC for future play-back in your home (not for resale to others).
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It's "copyright" (the "right" to make copies), not "copywrite". Large hard drives are still useful for storing programming that is legal to be copied/downloaded to the PC. PC tuner cards still tune local broadcast stations fine (via OTA or unencrypted QAM), and are allowed to record to disk. You can make transfers from HD Tivos, and from Firewire active cable boxes, if the channel doesn't have certain copy protection bits set. There are sources for legal downloads like iTunes, Amazon.
Copying *purchased* DVDs (rather than rented) to disk for personal usage on a media server to me is a morally gray area, not as clear cut copyright violation, could be argued as fair use but is now afoul of the DMCA. I personally feel that ought to be allowed, but breaking the encryption is illegal as of now.
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My cable company (Cablevision) allows DVR recordings to be stored (copied) indefinately. If the Supreme court decision only permits time shifting, this Cablevision feature seems to go further.
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The drives are small enough on these DVRs that the copyright holders haven't made a big stink about this, people can't make a huge library without running out of space. However as drives get bigger they may start implementing restrictions on how long programming may be kept.
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In other words, you can place a warning that is illegal to copy material but that does not make it law; right?
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No, of course the laws had to be passed by the government at some point, you can't just pretend there are bogus laws, put up warnings, and expect them to hold up in court. But the warning is referencing actual real laws; you think they just made it up? If the laws weren't real then you wouldn't ever read about various pirates being busted & lawsuits holding up.
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Knowing what I do now, I can't think of a good reason why someone should run out and buy an expensive PC to integrate into their HT.
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Doesn't have to be *that* expensive. They can be used as MP3 servers, photo servers, legal recordings + downloads, gaming machines, plus some like to web surf on their big HDTVs. They aren't absolutely necessary but some like these features.