PlayOn is Pretty Cool

[harshness]

I do now see how it could be interpreted that PlayOn is in violation of the DMCA with its recording technology.

PlayOn is a tool that can be used (and arguably is used primarily) to circumvent digital content protection. PlayOn is like drilling a hole in a wall and setting up a video camera.

Still, violating a terms of service agreement isn’t the same as breaking the law, and PlayOn has long maintained that users are just exercising the same rights they had with VCRs. The fact that PlayOn wasn’t sued into oblivion after launching its first recording features four years ago seems to bear out that claim.

This is a completely failed argument as the Betamax case doesn't apply to digital content. Further (and this is where the Betamax case breaks down entirely as applied to PlayOn), Betamax happened because there were a significant number of non-violating uses. This is not the case with PlayOn that features most prominently its use with content with which it is in both declared and implied violation. Many (if not most) of PlayOn's other arguments are similarly fallacious.

Until the Supreme Court determines exactly what constitutes fair use for time-shifting and device-shifting, consumers have a lot of leeway with how they consume content online.

You could try to apply this same logic to most any law. Until the Supreme Court decides that the law is indeed flawed, you can be tried and convicted of a violation. Who wants to find out what the Supreme Court decides some years down the road after multiple lower court losses and appeals?

In other words, until a major court decision specifically addresses the issue of whether or not recording streaming online video content for personal use constitutes fair-use (like recording with a set-top box DVR), the legality of PlayOn's recording technology remains a gray area of the law.

It is black and white until the Supreme Court says otherwise. Laws don't have to be tried before they're enforced -- quite the opposite!

Claiming that everyone else wants/does/needs it won't go far either as the law remains the law until one of the branches of the federal gubmint changes it or repeals it.

I personally see no reason to feel any more guilty of some ethical violation for using PlayOn to record from network TV websites than I do for using Playstation Vue's cloud-based DVR, which allows me to watch any show it streams on any device at my leisure, with the ability to fast-forward past commercials.

You're entitled to your opinion and that's okay as long as it is understood that it is your opinion and not anything that should be construed as fact or law. Just know that it isn't in accordance with the letter of the law including its subsequent amendments (there have been at least three) and until the courts decide otherwise, it remains the law. Whatever reasoning you or anyone else might apply will not change the law and assuming that nothing will happen because nothing has happened is a notion that I'm pretty sure that Netflix, Amazon, the MPAA, et al are going to dispel with impunity.