[Tfug] OT: Dumping Comcast TV. Dish or Direct?

[Linux Media]

>> There's a whole bunch of Shows and Movies that are supposedly "Public
>> Domain" because either the copyright has expired or occasionally
>> there's a legal glitch that was never resolved. Since I can't know
>> for sure if they are, I'll just tell you the ones I heard were and
>> you can google for them:

> Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that any of these shows are in the public
> domain.  The term of a copyright has reached such absurdly long lengths that
> only the oldest of films are out from under its grasp.
> 
> Hooray for stupidly long intervals!
> 
> But, don't let that stop you from watching some good movies for free.  :)

Do you think (for instance) that the (companies? organizations?) in the 
links I posted are, in actuality, breaking copyright laws in some way?

One pointer to this probably not being true is that most of these places 
not only have the same shows, but exactly the same episodes of those 
shows. I'm thinking that these shows/episodes are on some kind of 
specific licence to be shown on all these sites.

I was thinking that the fact that they all have commercials was a strong 
indication that things were legitimate. But that doesn't prove anything.

Believe me, I've made efforts to know what is legal and what isn't. But 
it's hard to get clear info about what sites have the right to show 
content. In fact I don't recall finding any info about any of these 
sites violating any laws.

I don't know if the courts see it this way... but I always thought it 
wasn't my responsibility to know if the guy on the corner is selling 
legitimate watches or if he stole them. That would mean that any kind of 
interaction with someone would mean conducting some research on the 
person. Could it be possible that the law sees each individual 
responsible to check out all content they run into on the internet? 
Seems it's the responsibility of the people showing the content to make 
sure it's legit.

Well... what I "think" and what the law is are two different things. 
It's just too big of a subject to get a clear grasp on. And how would 
one find out for sure that a site has the right to show content?

Rocco