I’m close to shore on my ship. “Arr FM plays the best shanties” I say as I tune my radio to my favorite station. After listening for 15 minutes, “Not another ad, I hate these.” I turn the dial to another station still playing some music for 3 minutes and then start to turn the dial back to Arr FM. Just then a cannonball whizzes across my hand. “Oh no, the HMS Pearl is on my tail” I shriek, but it’s too late chain shot has already shredded my sails.

Robert Maynard boards our vessel and puts a sharp sword to my throat. “What say ye in defense you dirty ad-skipping pirate?”

I yell out “But ad-skipping and even ad-blockers are legal! Even the FBI itself suggests using ad-blockers. It’s the responsibility of companies that serve free ad-supported media to ensure the efficacy of their ads but there’s no legal doctrine that says I can’t skip or block ads. Sure it might violate their TOS but they can find ways to block me or make the ads harder to avoid - or even switch to a paid delivery format that is covered by the legal system.”

“That’s no excuse!” he says as he decapitates me. A just punishment for a obvious pirate trying to squirm out of responsibilities such as I. Don’t steal free media kids.

Actually think that’s a rather apt description. Entertainment companies already went after Dish when they had an “AutoHop” commercial feature which included basically a streaming server from your home it would download and be accessible through (link). Kinda interesting because I didn’t know Dish was thinking ahead and had a pre-setup package for people wanting to remote stream home content.