If I can get an episode from my friend with no commercials to watch...

Aye, but there's the rub. You won't get the episode without commercials -- they will still be in the file you receive from him. The trick is, your Replay can play the file and automatically skip over the commercials if you so desire. But this is no different from receiving a videotape copy of the program from a friend and skipping over those commercials.

But that's not the point I am making -- the net result of this "piracy" is that more people are exposed to the program. This means the network can claim that more people watched the show, and set their advertising rates accordingly. That's how they make their money -- the more people that watch a show, the more they can charge for advertising. They do not factor in how many people "go to the refrigerator" during commercials.

So, I guess I still cannot understand why the networks would start a lawsuit to make fewer people watch their show. As you said in your previous post, it isn't the piracy that they are upset about -- it's the skipping of the commercials. They can't sue just because people don't watch the ads... but they can sue on a piracy issue, even though the more "piracy" that occurrs the better off they are. It's as though they're saying "Please, please watch our shows. But don't let your friends watch them because that would be piracy."

Go figure...

tanstaafl.