[mythtvnz] epgsnoop

[Tony Sauri]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:22, Nick Rout wrote:
> The time and date of the broadcast is probably not a work capable of
> protection. (Shortland Strret is on TV2 for 30 minutes at 7.00
> tonight.

Yes but the assembly of a bunch of such "Facts" into a single information
source could probably be copyrighted.

Further in your case above TV2 is a trademark and you could probably be
 pinged for using it.  Does that mean you would have to further qualify the
 programme as being availabe from service id 1202 on multiplex id ???  at UHF
frequency ?????????   (DVB-T talk)

> The descriptions probably are. (Maxwell plays a clever hand with
> Sarah, the honeymoon is over for Kieran and Sophie, and Rachel wields
> the executioner’s blade).

Yes ... and I understand that the ICETV case in Aust was won on the basis of
ICETV employment it's own editorial staff to "rewrite" such descriptions or
synopsis'

Standard Disclaimer: IANAL

But I have been reading the Copyright Act (online at
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM345634.html?sea
rch=ts_act_Copyright_resel&p=1&sr=1 ) ... a very turgid read indeed.

I find it interesting that there is a class of work - ( a communication work
 ) that is not infringed by making an adaptation ... (Translation etc).

To my mind the epg data broadcast on digital TV services would seem to be
 such a communication work  and all we or rather Hads and others are doing is
 translating from a rather arcane form of ascii code to xml ... however see
 standard disclaimer above.

This whole area of communication work area is rather gray ... for a web page
is the HTML source copyright? and if so is the intended graphical
representation also copyright? and if so does the existance of local
over-riding CSS files mean the viewer is breaching the copyright by making an
infinging copy and what of non compliant browsers? or does the html code
become a communication work as it transits the net so that adaptations are
non-infringing on the display device?   I cant find the answer in the Act.

As we move forward to an all digital TV age I think Hads epgsnoop arrangement
will the best target because then everyone is only making adaptations of the
data for personal non comercial use and will not be easily prosecuted for
copyright infringement.

The downsides of course are that we are stuck with the quality of the EPG
provided by the networks and there is also a risk of encryption being
adopted ... but would they do that ?  I suppose there is enough grunt in the
Sky settop boxes but what about the freeview devices then on the other hand
will the networks care if the STB takes xx secs to display the schedule?

On a slightly different note I have been fooling around with RedButton  and
note that the programme rb-download  can dump the mheg data to harddisk that
will then be easily parsed in much the same manner as epgsnoop.

Regards

Tony Sauri