If the courts are gonna protect business models, why not Sonic Blue's?

I just thought of an additional legal defense for Sonic Blue in this case over commercial skipping and show sharing. In theory, the concepts of both commercial skip and show sharing are legal since they both exist on VCRs. If the PVR market is to successfully compete in a market with VCRs, it must be able to offer the same features that a VCR does. Therefore, in order to protect their business model, a PVR must be allowed to include commercial skipping and show sharing features, otherwise they are hobbled in comparison to the competing products out there.


I know there's still that analog versus digital thing, but the courts should take into account that the content recorded on these boxes is coming from an analog signal (with the one exception of the DirecTivo boxes) so really I don't know that you can punish the boxes for storing in digital format- they're still losing quality in the initial broadcast.