June 2, 2028 — It’s been more than a month since a distant alien race asked the SETI Institute to transmit additional episodes of I Love Lucy, but the organization is unable to fulfill the request because of copyright restrictions.
News Corp./NBC-UniversalViacom, which owns the entire library of I Love Lucy episodes, has refused to grant SETI a license for interplanetary beaming of the classic sitcom.
SETI, which seeks to find life elsewhere in the universe, announced May 12 that it received a transmission April 15 from a species requesting additional I Love Lucy episodes (see FU, May 13). SETI said the transmission came from a planet about 100 trillion miles away. Occupants of the planet had intercepted an electromagnetic signal from an old CBS broadcast of the sitcom.
SETI decried the News Corp./NBC-UniversalViacom decision.
“This is just a shame, and could have tragic consequences,” said SETI spokeswoman Stella Beam. “We don’t know if, by refusing to send the additional episodes, the aliens will get angry and launch an attack on Earth.”
News Corp./NBC-UniversalViacom declined comment on its refusal to grant permission for additional episodes to be shared with the alien race. But the Motion Picture Association of America defended the company’s decision, arguing that allowing additional transmissions to the planet could launch a whole new era of content piracy .
“Unless SETI can develop some sort of solid digital rights management technology, there’s no telling what could happen by transmitting this sitcom through space,” said MPAA President Tia V. Miser. “We do not want to enable the creation of an intergalactic Grokster or BitTorrent.”
. at 4:53 pm |
[...] SETI TV goes live, I have faith that media corporations will be more than willing to help us out, because we could connect them with aliens who might also [...]
. at 12:43 pm |
I hope that SETI will at least allow the Wham! reunion special to be retransmitted throughout the galaxy. Otherwise, there’s no point in leaving the planet.