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As reported on Slashdot, BoyGenius, and now C\NET MobiTV has threatened to take down a forum I am associated with because of a post by one of our members.

Quote:

March 7, 2008 11:50 AM PST
MobiTV threatens suit over link providing free video streams
Posted by Declan McCullagh @ C\NET

MobiTV, a company that streams television channels to mobile devices, is upset that someone has pointed out a link on its Web site that lets anyone watch TV for free.

So it's threatening to sue.

A letter that a lawyer for MobiTV sent to the owner of HowardForums.com on March 4 invokes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and says posting the hyperlink is a violation of U.S. copyright and trade secrets law. (Howard Forums is a popular place to find information about mobile devices, including technical tips and availability of unlocked phones.)

(For the record, Howard Chui, the owner of Howard Forums, appears to be a Canadian living in Ontario. The server, however, is in Atlanta and therefore is within the reach of U.S. copyright law.)

MobiTV's general counsel, Andrew Missan, sent the letter, which says in part:

MobiTV considers Howard Forums' continued reproduction, public display and distribution of this information and links to constitute violation and infringement of MobiTV's intellectual property rights, including, without limitation, its copyright, trademark and trade secret rights. We are concurrently contacting Howard Forums' host and registrar regarding this matter...Please confirm in writing by 5:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time Friday, March 7, 2008 that you have complied with this demand. If we do not hear from you by that time, we will be forced to take further legal action to protect MobiTV's valuable intellectual property rights.

The link in question is qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd--it was apparently an XML file that lists the URLs for specific television channels. That file appears to have been disabled by Friday morning. But the individual television channels, such as rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1-CDMA.sdp (for MSNBC), could still be viewed on Friday at no charge by applications such as Apple's QuickTime.

Howard Forums' users, as you might expect, are hardly happy about the threats. E-mail correspondence that Howard Forums posted from MobiTV shows its lawyers consider the link to be obtained through "hacking" and that ICANN will be contacted as well.

On sites like Digg.com, the to-be-expected railing against overly litigious lawyers, poor security practices of the client represented by said lawyers, and mirroring of the links in question is in full swing.

While it's almost always true that technological self-help is a better protector of security than relying on the law, the legal threats still invite this question: Is it illegal under U.S. copyright law to post a link when the owner of the linked-to Web site objects?

It may seem like a simple question--the Web is built atop the idea that linking is free and easy--but the law doesn't always track technology. So the answer is a bit complicated.

At least in the United States, posting a link is First Amendment-protected activity. On the other hand, copyright can trump the First Amendment in some circumstances.

The concept of "contributory infringement" is a powerful one in copyright law; it says generally that someone who directly contributes to infringement should be held liable. In Sony v. University City, the U.S. Supreme Court said: "The common law doctrine that one who knowingly participates in or furthers a tortious act is jointly and severally liable...is applicable under copyright law." A copyright law treatise by William Patry--now a Google attorney--says: "Merely providing the means for infringement may be sufficient" to incur contributory copyright liability.

In the DeCSS lawsuit, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that 2600 magazine could be barred from publishing on its Web site a clickable hyperlink to infringing material. Here's an excerpt:

A hyperlink has both a speech and a nonspeech component. It conveys information, the Internet address of the linked web page, and has the functional capacity to bring the content of the linked web page to the user's computer screen...Application of the DMCA to the defendants' linking to Web sites containing DeCSS is content-neutral because it is justified without regard to the speech component of the hyperlink...Our task is to determine whether the legislative solution adopted by Congress, as applied to the appellants by the District Court's injunction, is consistent with the limitations of the First Amendment, and we are satisfied that it is.

The facts in the DeCSS case are slightly different from the MobiTV case, of course. In the former, the material being linked to was, by the court's view, violating copyright law. Here, the material being linked to doesn't violate copyright law--it's the unapproved viewing that, according to MobiTV, does.

Will a court agree? Unless either MobiTV or Howard Forums backs down, we may get a chance to find out.

Guess what happens if an NIT user inserts one of the url's found in the third post of the original thread >>HERE<< into a video stream bookmark of media player and then hits play??? ;)

(If the link goes down, try the url indicated in bold in the above quoted C\NET article.)

BTW, knowing Howard... He won't blink first. :)

http://www.howardforums.com/announcement.php?f=181

Hmmm... Interesting news, and thx for the pointer. ;)

I haven't read the deCSS ruling dicussed, but it seems they're saying that providing a URL as text is fine (purely speech, hence protected), but no hyperlinking? OK, guess that's good to know.

If these channels don't want to be watched for free, why do they have RTSP addresses that are open to everyone?

That's like a pay TV channel not scrambling its signals and suing anyone who publishes its channel number.

If you leave your curtains open, you shouldn't be offended if someone looks through your window.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisse (Post 152071)

If these channels don't want to be watched for free, why do they have RTSP addresses that are open to everyone?

The channels don't want to be watched? Oh, the poor channels. Let's start PETC -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Channels! :D

But, yeah, lawsuits don't seem a good substitute for at least slapping some form of access control on. Obscurity != security, and what'll they do now that it's out? Even if HoFo takes down the relevant posts, people know it now, and the information will stay out there. So they now have to at least change the channel urls, to stop the people who already found out. Or maybe require authentication, or something. And they could lose, thus being out lawyers' fees, and still having to fix their already-deployed system... looks real smart, don't it?

If there was even a weak form of security, that would at least make it clear that they don't want the public accessing it, and it would be understandable if they sued someone who did break such security.

Why didn't they add security in the first place? Were they expecting people to just stay away by default, and only click on links for which they had received permission?

Odd...can't find the Thanks button :)

Have a verbal thanks!

Strangely enough I found this lovely SQLLite Database full of all the links listed there ;)

Simply cp Metadata.db /home/user/.meta_storage and you'll have a lovely alphabetically organised list of channels. You will lose your current list of MP3s et. al. but I'm sure Metalayer Crawler will pick them up later.

Yeah, off-topic forum doesn't have thanks button. So anything useful like telling us where we get our free TV would be better in another forum, if you want thanked! :p

Not to worry, no one will abuse DRM-free streams meant for paying customers.

(I love AmazonMP3 AND Rhapsody)

ON TOPIC:
Ok, so how do we play them on the tablets?....(c;

Quote:

Originally Posted by w4csc (Post 152191)

ON TOPIC:
Ok, so how do we play them on the tablets?....(c;

Quote:

Originally Posted by YoDude (Post 152065)

Guess what happens if an NIT user inserts one of the url's found in the third post of the original thread >>HERE<< into a video stream bookmark of media player and then hits play??? ;)

Though the URL format has changed now... search about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by w4csc (Post 152191)

ON TOPIC:
Ok, so how do we play them on the tablets?....(c;

I believe you save the relevant channel URL as a favourite media link in the media player, but I haven't ever done this with video streams so I'm not 100% sure.

mobitv is working for me again on the tablet.
service is returned.
guess changing the URl didn't work for them or was just a deterent.
but seems like they are back to the old url.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisse (Post 153482)

I believe you save the relevant channel URL as a favourite media link in the media player, but I haven't ever done this with video streams so I'm not 100% sure.

Anyone else getting the message?:

'Media stream not found at given address'

Is this the end? :( If so, it was nice while it lasted.