TV Guides: mine, mine, mine!
Joshua Gans asks: Who owns TV guide data? Apparently Packer is suing the pants off ICE-TV who provide a TV guide service to users of MythTV, amongst others. Gans reckons its a defensive move to protect Channel Nine’s ad broadcast revenue.
I dunno, it seems to me that this is going to fall on its head. Having a TV listing is copyrighted? Perhaps a particular one is, but recreating the simple facts of one, I don’t see how that violates copyright.
Didn’t the UK Radio Times have a monopoly on listings for many years?
Meanwhile, Channel 9 is treating its viewers like dirt, shuffling shows like The Sopranos into the graveyard shift. No wonder people are using BitTorrent.