Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandgroper12
... yet it's supposedly not legal to record off the stations' web sites. The Copyright Act, with all its amendments, allows recording of TV programmes for personal use, and doesn't specify a means of getting them.
Would someone like to offer some explanation?
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The restriction has always, since the beginning of streaming radio way back in the old RealPlayer days, been that online broadcasting is presented 'as if' it's the same as terrestrial broadcasting i.e no access for the audience to the whole original source, be it film, tape, disc or magnetic wire.
But access to original source is always possible with digital media. One way or another.
The management of streaming online has always been to invoke DRM (research all that yourself, it takes up quite a bit of the web to go into the explanations and arguments for what is essentially a failed paradigm). Which DRM is effected in a whole lot of silly ways, one of which is easily defeated by open source use of the rtmp protocol - as in rtmpdump which is getting used here. rtmpdump in effect gets the file **streamed**, but nice and fast, and it also copies it **dumps** it too. Nothing illegal but inconvenient for drm patsies.
The legality of **copying** a show for personal use, however you do it, isn't the question; you could run one of quite a few capture applications right now to record anything that plays on your home computer. I'm guesssing you're here because you would also like to get it **fast** copied.
But the owners of stuff that gets broadcast, often attach restrictions to it that the broadcaster has to abide by in return for broadcasting rights... one of which is to **not** allow rapid file getting, even if it's a legal method which rtmpdump is.
So illegal really isn't the problem for viewers, it's a problem for the broadcaster. And they really do know that it's impossible to manage with any drm kind of stuff, so all they can really do is look away from this kind of self-help and try not to let the word get around too quickly.
Very sad because the people who could really do with the help that rtmpdump gives are those with not enough dosh to get good gear and nice fast dsl connections, so their streaming doesn't work well.
Nothing illegal going on here, just self-help against a heap of silly roadblocks.