Australian plasma television owners currently have a major beef against two sports channels there.  It appears that those small logos the sports channels place in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen are being burned into the plasma screens.

 Owners of the damaged TV sets are threatening legal action against the broadcasters, saying that their use of the constant, bright on-screen logos is burning the images permantently into their plasma screen TVs.  The channels in question are refusing to acknowledge any responsibility for the damage.

The broadcasters claim that the damage can be reduced (not eliminated) by turning down the contrast on their televisions.  This, in my opinion, is a poor solution.  The use of watermarked logos that change color to match the on-screen images behind the logos can prevent this from happening entirely.

Personally, I hope the TV owners sue the networks and win, not because I really care about the damage to their sets.  What I would rather see happen is all networks getting a wake-up call that their constant use of these annoying little logos in the corner of the screen is inappropriate.  I don't object to a television station identifying itself by TEMPORARILY putting a small logo in the corner of the screen.  What really ticks me off is seeing a logo their during the entire broadcast, which amazingly disappears when the commercials come on.  Why is it acceptable to interfere with the "content" by displaying watermarked (and even animated) logos on the screen but unacceptable to interfere with the advertising?  Simple.  Money.  You and I don't "pay" for the programs we watch, and the advertisers do pay to put their messages up.  As a result, the networks are afraid to anger the advertisers by slapping a logo over their ads, but perfectly willing to tick off the viewers by putting a logo over the programs the viewers want to watch.

For that matter, broadcasters are trying their best to get a "broadcast flag" measure through Congress.  The Broadcast Flag would prevent television audiences from recording, copying, fast-forwarding, rewinding, re-playing, or otherwise using the broadcast content as they see fit.  No more time-shifting if the network doesn't want you to.  No more fast-forwarding through commercials.  No more watching a recorded program a second time because you happened to miss something when you went to the bathroom without pausing. 

TiVo already did an experiment with this over the Christmas holiday.  I was given the option to have my TiVo download certain content from CNet and play it.  I couldn't transfer that content to my PC to watch there, move it to my other TiVo where I had a bigger television, or transfer it to the PSP to watch later.  I could do that with the programs the TiVo had recorded for me, just not these particular ones.  (Realistically I could have copied them using some analog approach, but why bother?)

Mark my words... there will come a time when the freedom we enjoyed with VCRs and DVDs is taken from us by the greedy jerks in Hollywood.  They'll charge us to rewind, fast-forward, play a show multiple times, etc.

Pushing back on little issues like this one will send a message to the content creators that the audience isn't willing to just sit there and take what they want to throw at us.  And for that reason, I hope these Australian TV owners win their suit.