Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

Let me post this simple question to you first. When you turn on your TV (and for the sake of this argument, let’s forget Cable TV for the minute and concentrate on over the air television) and you start the latest episode of Lost or American Idol, do you feel like you are accepting any obligation in watching that content?

This blog post has stewed from a train of thought I had this weekend, and it ultimately led me to feel pretty conflicted. As much as I have bitched about the RIAA and the movie industry (and boy do I still feel that way in many ways) I started to get a pang of guilt when it comes to good ole fashioned traditional TV media.

In it’s most basic sense, watching Lost binds you to a pretty simple non-verbal agreement that says, “Ok Fox, I want to watch this show. I am willing to be exposed to the commercial content that you have sold in order to pay for this show.”

Now I am being very careful to use the word “exposed.” I am not agreeing that I will sit at attention and watch the duration of every commercial, or that I will not fast forward through it if I have recorded it. Just that I am willing to scan and view what is appropriate to me, and NOT redistribute this content without the commercials included.

Nobody says you can’t go to the bathroom during commercials or fast forward through the beer commercial for a brand you don’t like. My friend Scott likened it to a magazine and I agree. I can flip past pages I am not interested in, but when I loan someone that magazine, the pages are still there, I am not tearing them out.

This is where we, as consumers, have gotten very greedy. We are using tools to strip out or skip commercials completely, we are using services online to download these shows without the commercials. I don’t exactly have an answer, I just think it’s time we accept that in this war (and believe me it is a war) for and against media, DRM and fair use rights, we are not the innocent bystanders.

This is not World War II. The RIAA, the major networks and even Cable are not Hitler tearing across the world trying to impose their will on an entirely innocent public.

Just because I do not download and burn my DVDs, or rent and rip everything in Netflix’s library doesn’t mean it isn’t happening and that these companies do not have the right to fight it.

I have been guilty of this argument too, but let’s be realistic “I don’t like your business model” doesn’t mean “I have the right to steal your product.”

Now let’s not end this thinking that the media companies haven’t gone way to far to protect their products, they have. These companies are hanging onto dying business models that place the consumer dead last when it comes to rights. They are building a system where the consumer grudgingly accepts the content in a system that completely exists on the premise that we have no rights and even when we purchase a DVD, we are purchasing the plastic and have no right to watch or view it elsewhere. That if we have four devices we must buy the movie four times.

All of this is ridiculous and believe me, at some point the wall will come down, it has to. The point of this post is to make sure that as we all start mustering our armies and the fight for digital media rights spills over borders and the government gets involved to protect the consumers rights, that we do not forget one simple truth. Very, and I mean VERY, few of us are using content legally in all regards. Wether we like the rules or not, we are breaking these agreements, we are stealing content…and the simple truth is that not liking a law does not give you the freedom to break it.

The farther we push the boundaries of fair use, the further these companies are going to go to protect their content. The real struggle comes in finding the middle ground.