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TV Networks Sue ReplayTV
Robert Wilde writes: "Three major television networks have sued Sonicblue over the ReplayTV 4000 and asked the court to grant an injunction to prevent the sale of the device." Here's another blurb about the lawsuit. All you readers that predicted that Replay would get sued over this device, give yourselves a pat on the back.
I'm not actually happy that something bad, such as this, can be so easily and accurately predicted.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
great idea!
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No-reg Link to article:
http://archive.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Ne tworks-ReplayTV.html
The new replayTV lets you share shows with other ReplayTV owners, and they do have a web server because you can connect to it to set it up while you're at work or whatever..
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Didn't the Supreme Court already decide that VCRs are legal? Can any legal experts out there explain why this case is different?
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This is so similar to the RIAA injunction against Diamond for the RIO MP3 player. It should turn out about the same I would imagine:
The lawsuit will add a lot of legal fees to the cost of development, artificially driving up the retail price. Meanwhile, the networks will desperately look for ways to protect their content against fair use by consumers!
What a scam!
Unless replay is going to keep some kind of centralized database of who is transmitting what to whom, it would be very hard to enforce a fifteen retansmit limit if a bunch of reasonably competent hackers decided to break it. In any protection scenario, you've got to have some trusted element in the equation. If you're putting the hardware into the hands of the public, it can't be considered trusted. Since users A and B can't be trusted, you would need some kind of an intermediary trusted element, like a decryption key server, to make sure shows couldn't be pirated.
Music is something people generally listen to over and over again. A favourite song might be played 100 times by a person. On the other hand, a single episode of favourite TV show will generally only be watched once or twice. Even die hard Star Wars fans have probably only seen the movie a couple of hundred times!
TV has always been free. The networks have an explicit agreement with producers to show advertising. They have no such agreement with TV consumers to actually watch them. If the Networks say this sort of technology will cost them money, well their business model is wrong.
As the happy owner of a Replay TV, I can tell you that it has changed TV forever. Prime Time is whenever I sit down in front of the couch. I regularly watch two or more episodes of a program in a row. Episodic programs are much more interesting when they can be viewed back-to-back rather than week-to-week. I'm addicted to the pause and rewind features. Phone rings in the middle of West Wing? No problem - I don't miss a sentence.
One of the big complaints is that I get to skip commercials. Do I? You damn betcha! I don't waste a moment on cheesy ads pushing depilatories, cleansers not available in stores (or in states with active consumer fraud statutes, I suspect), and Slim Whitman retrospectives. However, I DO stop and watch ads that are either funny (Amstel Lite, for example), or are for something in which I'm interested.
As for sharing recorded programs across the Internet, it should be noted that this feature is for sharing programs with other Replay 4000 owners. I'm sure it will be able to be hacked, but how does it differ from sharing my Babylon 5 tapes with unfortunate friends who don't have cable?
I hope Sonic Blue is able to vigorously defend these suits. I'm sick to the teeth of network executives who want to control what, when, and how I watch.
For more on this phenomenon, check out the last section of Michael Lewis' book, Next.
And now for a word from our sponsor...
I don't see them suing Tivo, a company that NBC owns a big stake in. Why? Because they don't have this one silly button? I can understand why this product might be seen as a threat by the networks... What I don't understand is their legal case for copyright infringement. Why the heck does the ability to skip forward 30 seconds make the difference between an "un-infringing" product and an infringing one?
The networks are picking on a weak, underfunded company that doesn't have the resources to fight them. What makes it even dirtier is that one of the plaintiffs has a financial stake in that company's direct competitor.
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How ironic that it only took two weeks after SonicBlue won a Technological/Engineering Emmy Award for the Advancement of Television for the big boys to crackdown on them. Too bad we still have media people wanting to control information rather than letting it free.
is this type of lawsuit going to happen to the "pop-up" killers and ad blockers that proliferate the internet today? It will happen.
Is see the flaws in the current 'underground' sharing systems, and offer a better solution, charging appropriately.
For example, if RIAA would provide high-bandwidth, high-availability servers with fully indexed music with fast searching and guaranteed bitrate quality (192-256 perhaps?), I'm sure people would pay a reasonable price per download.
Of course, they would have to actually invest some money and effort to to this, and not be raping the artists to fill their pockets anymore. Oh the horror.
This is not really intended to shut SONICblue down. As the article states, the defendants and the plaintiffs are also negotiating a business deal. This lawsuit is nothing more than a pressure tactic designed to get a more favorable deal.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
They have joined it. They just joined a different team. NBC has a stake in Tivo, which is essentially the same product as ReplayTV.
Why are they suing Replay instead of Tivo? Ostensibly because Replay has a "commercial advance" button that lets you skip forward thirty seconds. Apparently this button spells the difference between a copyright-infringing product (Replay) and a perfectly ok product that NBC does business with (Tivo). Who could have known that the ability to fast forward your video footage would make a product "infringing"?
If the networks win (which they probably will, as I doubt the defendant will spend the dough to fight this one), they not only damage a competitor to one of their interests (Tivo), but they also gain a legal precedent for limiting what has been found to be a perfectly legal practice (time shifting TV.)
If you don't like seeing the media companies taking this sort of action, there's only one thing for you to do:
CONTACT YOUR GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE!
That's right, get off your behind, write a letter, make a phone call, take a drive, fire off an email. DO SOMETHING!!!
And after you've contacted your representatives, tell a friend. Tell several friends. Write to a newspaper. Get the word out.
For those without nytimes account: news.com
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
People have been skipping ads, not only via VCRs, Tivos, and other timeshifting devices, but by flipping channels and leaving, for years.
I thought it was an accepted fact that advertisers are gambling that you will see an ad, and that the ad will have an effect on your buying patterns.
What next, will media corporations sue us if we don't buy advertiser's products?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
However, don't everyone rejoice, because in a few years your favorite network shows will be interlaced with so many ads that it will make you sick.
Leo: Mr. President, your wife called, and she wants you to pick up some ICE COLD COCA COLA (beat) on the way home from the 'house.
President: Thanks, Leo. Please tell Charlie not to forget to put WORLD-CLASS MONTE BLANC PENS in my jacket pocket, like my dead secretary used to do!
Cool! Just like The Truman Show :-)
Well, OK, not so cool. But it's not actually that different now, it's just not quite so blatant. Companies pay a lot to get their cars (vehicles provided by Ford Motor Company), beer (mmmm...tasty Budweiser in the distinctive and patriotic red, white and blue can!) and other products into television shows and movies already. It's called product placement, and it's been going on for a long time. Of course, there's that nifty real-time video replacement where ads in stadiums get replaced with ads from television sponsors, so maybe it is already that blantant...
And then I'll tell them I won't give them any more money if they don't listen to me. Lets see, I gave my party $100 this year. Lets see... The RIAA gave my party about 50 grand this year. Disney gave my party about 140 grand this year.The MPAA was relatively cheap and only gave them about 20 grand this year. Hmm. I wonder who they would possibly listen to... (Statistics thanks to opensecrets.org here.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Dear FatRatBastard,
It has come to our attention that you are violating the rights of our clients and abusing their copyrights by going to the restroom during commercials.
You are therefore being sued for the sum of ONE BILLION DOLLARS (puts pinky to mouth).
Sincerely,
Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe
Attorneys at Law
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
In order for a judge to instate an injunction, the plantiffs have to provide evidence that:
1) The likely ruling will be in favor of the plantiffs. Given the historical precedent of the VCR lawsuit this seems unlikely.
2) The injunctive relief is necessary to prevent some sort of serious damage to the plantiffs. In this case, they can't really proove that they would suffer any consequences so immediate as to require such a remedy.
So if they get a judge with their head screwed on straight I think Sonicblue will be okay. Of course I've seen a lot of insane judgements lately on these sorts of issues. So, I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Which bring me to my next point: if a television network is going to beam this shit into my home via a publically regulated electromagnetic spectrum, where do they get off telling me what I can do with the signal?
Hmm...given the great steaming pile of crap produced by the US TV networks in recent years, I'd say it would be no great loss.
Really, decent programming is pretty thin on the ground, and most good TV originated from other sources (independent productions, cable TV, internationally...). If big bad ol' "commercial skip" and the ability to share programming with fellow Replay owners results in the death of a TV network or three I say let technology prevail!
If such a shakeup doesn't improve the quality of TV then at least maybe more people will extricate their fat asses from their chesterfields to go for a walk in the park, once "Survivor" is cancelled due to lack of advertising revenue...
The right to sue anyone for anything is written into the constitution.
The way to win this case is to buy each member of the supreme court a Replay TV unit. They are not going to give it up once they hve used one.
This is not Napster Mk II. The replay unit is not designed for the primary purpose of infringement.
The Tivo unit is evil, it is yet another of those clueless dotcom scams where you buy something and then have to pay a monthly fee to make it work. Like AOL the designers look for sneaky opportunities to bombard you with ads.
I pay $60 a month for my satelite TV. That should be plenty to support the program makers.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
US law does not permit this. Yes, it's silly but that's what the law currently says. It certainly veers away from the original intent of the Copyright clause in the Constitution which aimed to protect *publishers* from being undersold and forced out of business. With "publishing" being now very simple and almost cost-free (if you choose your distribution medium well) the whole nature of dissemination of information has changed completely.
Apparently they do have a problem with TiVo and the old ReplayTV, at least on a business level, because both of these technologies allow users to cut out commercials. They just haven't found a way to sue these products out of existance yet, or prevent them from operating properly. So you can pretty much count on them sneaking more ads into the programs themselves.
Finding God in a Dog
I think the TV networks can learn from the music industry's strategy. If you don't want people to copy your content willy-nilly, provide a legit way for them to get it how they want, when they want. The music industry's version of this is MusicNet and PressPlay; they same principle applied to TV would be video-on-demand for everything. Obviously people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to time-shift TV and skip commercials, but none of that money is going to the networks. Commercial-free VOD could potentially give viewers and networks what they want.
... and those of you who were really wrong, slap yourselves in the face.
I'm not sure where this is coming from. TiVo's model isn't that different from that of Replay. Replay chooses to bundle the service fee with the price of the unit. You can either pay $10/month with TiVo or $250 on a one-time basis. Both Replay and TiVo have actively looked for opportunities for advertising dollars, but neither one is bombarding people with advertisements. In TiVo's case, this takes the form of some sponsored content that you have to go looking for; while they're definitely attempting to make it convenient to find material from their partners, it's NOT pushed on you in an AOL-like manner. I've got a really low tolerance for gratuituous spam, and TiVo doesn't even show up on my radar screen of annoyances. It's a good product (as is Replay) and was clearly designed with the consumer's interests first and foremost.
But in a way so shops can re-enable them.
Just like the way virtually every DVD player sold in Oz has been modified to be multiregion compatible.
They could just have a couple of little holes in the back that line up with some internal screw switches on the board.
I certainly don't have all the answers, but I do have a few observations:
For copyright protection to be effective, content must remain encrypted from receipt by the consumer, to display by the device. Of course at some point it is available (i.e it can be seen and/or heard), but presumably, the cost of equipment to digitally capture such content at a sufficient resolution to threaten master redistribution would be prohibitive for the consumer.
Of course, storing such content is not a problem, if it can only be played back on a restricted set of devices, i.e. content custom-encrypted for each and every consumer. Of course this raises three questions: 1) How can such encryption be done effectively, especially for broadcast or multicast delivery? 2) How do you deal with playback equipment that breaks down, or with vendors that go out of business and so can't "clone" decryptors in such equipment when it breaks. 3) How do you permit multiple playback devices with the same key for convenience within a single household?
Question 1 can be addressed thus: broadcast and multicast content is encrypted with a public key that matches a common private key in all receivers. Yes, this is a weak link, but the receiver need not be a display device -- content would still have to be uniquely encrypted for a particular display device (more on this later). Furthermore, most broadcast content is likely time-sensitive -- it's value diminishes with age. Of course, hacking such a receiver to expose the private key would attract strong SSSCA-like sanctions. Non-broadcast content could be encrypted at source with a public key provided by the consumer at time of purchase, presumably via automated electronic means. It is important, however, that the corresponding private key not be known by the consumer, lest unencrypted versions of the content become available to her. Appropriate signing, by an authority the content provider recognizes, of the public key provided by the consumer (from his equipment) alleviates this.
Question 2 is easily addressed. Clearly each piece of playback equipment has, within it, a decryption module that is (a) sealed and relatively impervious to attack, (b) contains a unique private key. The relevent external connections to this module are encrypted content input and analog decrypted content output. Such modules will be generally customized for each type of equipment. Of course this raises the question of what do you do if the playback equipment, with a unique key fails, and the manufacturer goes out of business (and so can't clone a decrypter module).
This brings us to question 3. Clearly, there is a conflict between uniquely keyed playback equipment, singly-keyed broadcast receivers, and the consumer's desired storage and transport of content around the home. Enter the "transcrypter".
A transcripter is a piece of equipment designed to take content encrypted with its public key, decrypt it internally, and reencrypt it with the public key of another piece of equipment. Placing a transcrypter ahead of any playback device will thus effectively alter it's public key. Transcrypters also have the property that, although manufactured with a unique key, can be cloned to the key of another transcripter (perhaps some limited number of times), thus permitinng several playback devices to share a common key. Of course, when cloning a transcrypter, they have to authenticate eachother to ensure that the public keys correspond to private keys that are "secure" within the transcrypter. Furthermore, while transcrypters should be relatively inexpensive devices, their price should deter distribution of many numbers of cloned transcrypters with encrypted content. Authentication of transcrypters with eachother can be simply a case of detecting public keys signed by an approprliate authority known to the hardware. Hacking a transcrypter, of course, would attract SSSCA-like sanctions.
Transcrypters would allow custom encryption of received content to a common public key used by the consumer, and perhaps, registered with some authority. Receivers would have built-in transcrypters to output content encrypted with this common consumer's public key. Playback devices would have transcrypters to reverse the process. Content encrypted at the source for a consumer would be encrypted with the common public key for all the consumer's transcrypters.
The issue of signing authorities, is, of course, a tricky one politically, however, it is not unreasonable for a piece of equipment to identify peer equipment certified by a common industry body, or its own manufacturer.
More problematic of course, is the registration or at least the signing of a consumer's common public key -- clearly the consumer can't generate the public/private key pair lest they get access to unencrypted content. If a third party (say a transcrypter manufacturer) generates the keypair and signs the public key, they can impersonate the consumer, generate lots of cloned transcrypters, and incriminate the consumer as a content pirate. One solution is to have the transcrypter generate the keypair itself, and trust an external authority for signing the public key. It should be possible to do this in a manner where the transcrypter can be trusted to not disclose the private key to anyone. For example, the transcrypter can allow for arbitrary code execution, particularly to access it's external interfaces, with hard-coded internal transcryption routines and key generators that remain private. This would allow open source networking code to be run on it that could be audited.
Of course, these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm open to a critical analysis, and realize that the hackability of such devices (receivers, playback devices, and especially transcrypters) is probably the weakest link. However, I'd much rather see SSSCA-type laws applied to a small set of devices and a much broader set (like general-purpose computers), and this may bne one way to do this and still respect fair use.
You could've hired me.
When are major media corps going to realize that they can't beat it so they should just join it.
They've realized it. But their method of joining is to sue their object to the verge of collapse, and then partner from a position of strength (vide Napster).
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
This is stupid. People bypass commercials all the time with their VCRs. Now the networks are mad because people think highly enough of their TV shows to show a friend? This is the same thing as saying "This is a good show, here's the tape" Plus you can only distribute a show 15 times.
Besides, if you want to download practically any show on TV, go to efnet or something.
Troy
I guess they should also sue GE and American Standard, since my fridge and toilet also make me miss commercials.
If miss commercials, it does nothing to affect the incoming that a network has made selling that time. True - if a majority of viewers started using these and skipping commercials, then the value of that time goes way down, but we are nowhere near that point, and by the time it gets there, I'm sure there will be another revenue stream in place.
As for the sharing thing - how stupid are they? First off - I don't really understand how they can get so paranoid over something they are BROADCASTING - we're giving it away, but no one else can. (Simplistic - hell yes).
So anyway, I tape a show cause I'm out doing something and miss it when it is on. So, that lets me become a loyal viewer, so I am more likely to tune in when it is on next time.
So, someone else misses it so I send it to them. Same thing - viewer recruitment.
They should be embracing the fact that it is helping people see their shows they may miss and creating a stronger, more loyal viewiership.
As for the commercial thing - the people skipping the commercials would probably have done the same thing with video tape or just left the room anyway.
Guess I'll be scared of a lawsuit next time I tape Friends or something and let my office mate borrow the tape.
...the one where Grandpa Simpson is complaining about how young kids keep trying to get something free for doing nothing. He then walks into the Social Security office and scremes to the clerk, "Gimme Gimme Gimme!"
... going to fund their businesses? One of two options...either they aren't, or they are going to move the commercials directly into the TV programming, just like they have already with football and the World Series.
Here's the deal. You want to get TV for free, you have to pay the price. I'm not talking about the cost of your cable bill here folks...very little of that actually goes to ABC or CBS. That money is for the cost of operations with your TV company. That's why Showtime, HBC, etc. charge money for their channels, since they don't show nearly as many advertisements during their programming. That price is commercials.
Sure, you're have every right to skip over the advertising if you want (now that it's almost instantly possible to do so). Yet what happens when advertising executives realize that no one is watching their adds anymore? They're going to pull funding from you favorite TV channels. Then how are CBS, ABC, FOX,
If you think the business model is wrong, then you are right. They will have to change it. But don't go crying to me when they stick ad promos even further into your face, because that is the only way that they can get money without charging you a dime.
When I hear about devices like this one it really makes me wonder how hard it would be to recreate one of your own. There are plenty of video capture cards on the market today not to mention the TV cards, many of which are supported by linux. Encoding audio and video streams into MPEG in real time should be no big deal to a 1.4 Ghz athlon provided well written code is used. At worst a dual processor system would be needed. There are plenty of video cards on the market with video out built in. So my question is, why aren't hobbyists homebrewing systems that will do what these devices are designed to?
I'm seriously considering it myself for the simple reasons that it doesn't sound all that hard and the gatekeepers of the thinly veiled propaganda known as television would disapprove.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
They better be careful. This is like the Felton case in some ways. Felton was "merely" threated, and now he's going to use that to show he was chilled and therefore the law that hung over him (DMCA), was a 1st Ammendment violation.
What we have here is a little different, in that instead of a person's speech being threatened, a product is being threatened with being withheld from the market. When you look at who the planning-to-sue guys are, you see a big list of big media megacompanies. The term "restraint of trade" comes to mind. Just saying that they're "planning to sue" may be enough to make them become defendants.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Who's to say that people are watching their ads now?! I think most gen-X-Y-ers probably screen out 90% of the advirtising they see on TV. They go and heat up their pizza, or get a pop, or go to the watercloset, or whatever. Now maybe that 10% is important, but as I see it, the only really useful thing about ads is to let you know a place exists. That rules out about 60% of the ads on TV these days (Walmart, Sears, the major Pizza places [donatos is a toss up as to whether it's major yet..], DQ) And people who buy a lot of stuff and eat out will continue to do so, whether or not they see a lot of ads, and people who are generally miserly with their disposable income (we spend it on $3000 computers instead) will continue to do so, even if subjected to a barage of ads (unless they are computer ads, maybe not even then).
I sometimes wonder what would happen to consumer spending, both in volume and in distribution, if everyone stopped running ads for a week. I don't think much would change. Those of us who like pizza know where we like to get it from, those of us who like to get groceries (anyone?) know where we like to go to get them.
There is the argument that "ads target the young and impressionable" who I suppose don't know about these places. Ah yes, some ad-agency paradise - where the ONLY source of information for those impressionable young'uns is TV - no friends, no billboards on the highway, no magazines, and God forbid, no parents to get in the way of the 'tube's influence..
There has been at least one documentary (Frontline I think it was) a few years back about the Neilson ratings and how they basically don't work. People don't log themselves with the system correctly or consistantly, channel flipping behavior is sketchy, and they can't tell if the person is watching the ad, or getting a coke. They hinted about people trying to come up with totally passive sensing devices - laser scanners that will tell whose in the room, etc. The program ended with a judgement that whether or not Neilson's work well, they are some form of "currency" that networks and ad agencies can use to judge shows. I think as long as people continue to buy stuff (which I think they will with or without ads), the ad agencies don't really care that much about how accurate the Neilson's really are.
But as I'm not an ad-executive, and I'd love to hear from someone who is.
Fifteen would be a crowd in my living room. But wait, it's now 2005 and Web cams have progressed and all the dark fiber is lit and lots of folks are starting to leave their living room cams on so that friends can share virtual space. Now, you're watching a k3wl show in your house, and I'm there too, and I zoom the cam in by remote and watch with you.
Where's the difference between this - a capability we'll surely have in 2015 if not 2005 (long as we don't shoot ourselves too seriously in the foot while gunning for Afghans) - and Replay buddies? Really, none at all. Unless there are agents in the Web cams that blank out all copyrighted media from retransmission.
So, do we want a future where we just can't fully share our living rooms virtually, because the police quite literally have extensions within our devices? That's where this goes tomorrow, if SonicBLUE doesn't win today. There's no other way the networks' strategy makes the slightest sense in the long run. And heck, our buddies might be getting one of those bootleg terrorist-friendly channels off the satellites - better make sure we can't pick that up from their living rooms either....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
My Prediction: Since Replay doesn't actually MODIFY the content of the program (which is completely intact on the hard drive), this copyright infringement suit will be lost by the networks. The courts will ask why the networks haven't pursued similar lawsuits against VCR manufacturers that provide the ability to fast forward past commercials, and then throw it out. This is just another example of how corporate bozos think inside their tiny little boxes, and don't think about how they could HARNESS the power of the technology to further their evil little (and I do mean LITTLE) deeds. See.. if I was a TVLand exec, I'd got to SonicBlue (Replay's owner) and say.. "Hey.. what if we ADDED functionality to allow people to rate and even comment on commercials by providing identifying information in the vertical blanking interval of the video feed, and you send that back to us over the internet?" (the units have ethernet connections...) Just a thought.
In my opinion, the public airwaves should be given only to not-for-profits, with a mix of public funding, fees, donations, and simple sponsorships. Then we wouldn't have to worry about "skipping commercials", and the content we get would be of higher quality.
I'm not sure what they're worried about here; popular TV shows are already readily available on the internet for download, usually within hours of their airing. You don't need a ReplayTV to record them; you can do it with a tv-tuner card on your computer and video recording software. People do it all the time - this would make it easier, but you only need one person to record each show for everyone to be able to get it, so that's really not important. And there's far fewer TV shows aired than there are music CDs released, so you don't need nearly as many people to rip the stuff - the people with TV-tuner cards or video-in on their PC are enough.
So basically the stuff will be on the internet regardless of the outcome of this suit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
If you're going to make references to a movie . . .
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And people in TV shows should drive exactly what around? I'm not arguing that product placement isnt fucking annoying, but to a certain degree, it makes the shows more realistic, honestly, duff beer ain't going to fly.
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I sure would like to see more discussion about the overall intellectual property system and less moralizing and preaching from one soapbox or another. Pollux touches on it in his comments about the broadcasting business model. Yes, maybe the business model is wrong. Maybe the whole intellectual property model is wrong, and I mean in the sense of brokenness not in the sense of wrongdoing. I'm not trying to be the little voice of socialism or hacker utopia, I am simply saying that technology has opened holes in some of the basic assumptions that underlie economics. Like the holes in airport security, they've always been there waiting for somebody to step through them.
What made the broadcasting industry possible was not the invention of the technology, it was that the expense of operating the technology limited its use to a few people who could afford to invest in it. Same with the recording industry and the publishing industry. The whole copymaking and distribution business is what made intellectual property a meaningful idea in the first place. Go all the way back to the printing press. If Gutenberg's invention had been so cheap and simple that virtually anybody could reel off as many copies of anything they wanted, the whole copyright concept itself probably wouldn't exist today. We never would have had a publishing industry with investments to protect, motivated to turn copyright into a holy word.
We have the concept of IP because technology was developed in a certain order. Expand your mind a little. Instead of the knee-jerk "what about artist's rights?" reaction, try to forget for a moment that you ever heard of intellectual property. A minstrel wanders into your village and sings a song in a tavern. A storyteller tells a story. They leave town. The local minstrels and storytellers repeat the material, then they wander off to other towns, etc. The performers get paid to perform, in fact some of them might make more money than the creators of the material (no ethical problem there -- the copymaking industry does that in the real world). But the songs and the stories themselves are just sort of floating around in the air. They aren't intellectual property, but they also aren't public property, they aren't even property at all. They are just part of your culture.
So in the hypothetical model time passes and someone invents the Internet, and suddenly you can zip this material off to your cousin in the next village effortlessly. Nobody gets majorly bothered because the fact of who created the material is not economically significant in this model. The minstrels and storytellers can keep doing their thing as long as people still value live performance.
When you separate the fundamental ideas from those that are merely customary (or lucrative), the righteous moralizing everybody has been doing on all sides of IP issues starts to sound like arguing over whether Superman could outrun the Flash. Maybe the real truth is that there is no such thing as "Intellectual Property" at all. Or to borrow from Galaxy Quest, "There is no quantum flux, there is no auxiliary, there's no God Damn Ship!"
Intellectual property is not a god-given right, it's not a "given" at all. It's an investment protection mechanism that was invented by investors, not inventors. At some point we have to move on. The economy would be a lot different without IP, but nobody really knows how. On the other hand, cars and trains might not exist if the concept of "wheeled travel" had been treated as the intellectual property of whoever invented the wagon.
IP appears to be breaking, if not broken already. IP isn't an axiom or a law of nature, it's a tradition. The really disappointing thing is that most of the bright people who could be thinking up a different system seem to be spending their time arguing over how the contracts are written.
Rant completed.
In the UK, we have two commercial-free channels (BBC1 and BBC2) - These are paid for through a "TV licence", payable by anyone who owns a TV and receives broadcasts on it (burden of proof is on you if you do not receive any signals) Even broadcasts of non-BBC channels is included.
This license costs approx. £120 (GBP, ~$180) per year, and a massive infrastructure exists to prevent avoidance - Detector vans, databases etc... Last I heard public opinion was split about 50/50 as to whether to replace the license with advertising on these two channels, and therefore lose the massive cost of operating this infrastructure into the bargain.
Does the US really want to exchange their currently simple television infrastructure for one small "fast-forward advert" button? Surely you are not so lazy that you can't use an ordinary Fast-forward button, and let-go at the end of the adverts (TIVO style) ???
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
Free Mac Mini
great idea!
Sounds pretty fucken good to me!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I think it's easy to assume that the TV networks' upper crass that started this lawsuit know nothing about the implementation details of the new ReplayTV networking thing, just like any old management types out there (the richer, the dumber). They were just waiting for something "legally exploitable" to come out, so they can sue it into oblivion.
Managers don't know shit about technical stuff, and neither do Judges. In the middle sit few big-ticket lawyers who know this all too well; they are the ones who will benefit from this. They're probably the ones who started the fire this time around.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I've been waiting and watching the various PVRs waiting for on that will do what I want. This one was actually looking like it might come close to it. TiVO would be perfect for me if it would allow me to get the video off and onto another media like a VCD or DVD-R but alas the work to do this is more than I'd like, it's unsupported code, and the primary support forum for TiVO usrs (not owned by them BTW) BANS discussions about doing this!
. cg i?action=topics&forum=TiVo+Underground&number=6&Da ysPrune=10&SUBMIT=Go [TiVO Underground]
So, TiVO ain't it. The DISH 501PVR (I'm a DISH user) apparently uses crap Microsoft code that's been *surpise* ABANDONED by Microsoft, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel for the next DISH PVR but they say it'll be Linux based.
Helllooo companies. I'm a consumer. I have money I wish to spend on a VCR like device of commercial production quality. Here are my requirements in order to pry the dead presidents from my paws:
Record shows, NOT time slots!
Some sort of "season pass" deal like the TiVO.
The ability to add larger HDs when I desire (PVR501 is cake to upgrade)
There should be support or SDK made available, there shouldn't be stupid lawsuits against people hacking the box.
The box should support multiple tuners so I can watch and record.
I should be able to pause live TV.
I want to be able to fast forward past commercials. IF they want me to watch the commercials stop making them insipid and show me something interesting - and not 50times a day!
Most importantly, give me a method of archiving on media like a DVD-R or VCD. I'd really like to be able to edit these on my PC before final archiving. I'm doing this from VCR now and it sux.
I, as a consumer, want a box like this. I will pay cash for it and I'll pay a bunch for it. You can make all the noise you want but I'll have what I want on way or another. TiVO is nearly there! If the hackers manage to get it to the point where the shows can be pulled off easily I'll buy one and mod the crap out of it to get what I want. Either build what I want and let me use it or lose my money and interest! This box was looking good - thanks alot jerks. TiVO isn't yet integrated with DISH but with the possible purchase of DirectTV it could be - I hope. These lawsuits are NOT endearing me or my dollars to the networks.
Some URLs of interest:
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgitivo/forumdisplay
http://www.9thtee.com/tivoupgrades.htm [TiVO Upgrades - Ethernet!]
http://www.9thtee.com/extractstream.html [Video Extraction from the TiVO]
http://www.vcdhelp.com/ [Great site for VCD help]
One of these days I'll own a PVR but NOT until I'm able to do what I want with it - by hook or by crook.=!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
TiVo boxes have the same 30-second skip feature (at least the new ones do). It's an undocumented feature, and you have to have a bit of technical savvy to enable it. I would expect that most /. readers could enable this feature, though.
Like another astute reader posted, the governmen allows the networks to broadcast as a service for the citizens of this country. Broadcasting is a privilege, not a right, and there is no guarantee that they can make money by broadcasting. It would also seem to me that the networks would be required to prove that they have lost money because of this practice. With billions spent every year on TV advertising, I hardly think this is costing the networks money.
I really can't see this case going anywhere.
So they have a "commercial advance" button. What if they didn't? Would it not be copyright infringement then?
It would not be copyright infringement, under the holding of the Supreme Court Sony Betamax case. There, the Court held that time-shifting of a VCR does not give rise to copyright infringement liability for the manufacturer of the VCR because the end-user's time-shift is fair use. Even if some users might use the VCR to copy commercial videos or otherwise engage in copyright infringement, the substantial noninfringing use of time-shifting gets the manufacturer off the hook.
But the fair use factors include the impact on a marketplace. Time-shifting was blessed under 17 U.S.C. s. 107 (factor 4), because it actually involved an increase in commercial viewing.
Not so with replayTV's commercial advance. Or so the argument goes.
Without passing on the question, the studios certainly have a case to make. Without commercial advance, there would be slam-dunk Supreme Court authority in support of the defendant. With it, the Sony case is arguably distinguishable.
No, TiVo does not have the Thomson/RCA-licensed "Commercial Advance" feature that the Replay 4000 does. Commercial Advance attempts to detect ads, flags them after recording, and then on playback, the player skips the ads. This is the same feature as in many RCA (and some other brand) VCRs.
TiVo has an undocumented "skip 30 seconds" feature, which I find rather pointless - using the second or third fast-forward speeds zips me through ads almost instantly. (And if you enable the 30-sec skip, you lose the "skip to end" feature that I use more.)
Steve
See the Supreme Court's opinion on the Betamax issue.
Statements of note:
This case wouldn't even be an issue if Replay weren't a digital medium and therefore covered by the DMCA. I suspect that the major networks are counting on the ability of the DMCA to override fair use rights. I don't think it will work. They may be caught trying to defend the notion that the advance button is different from a FFWD button.
actually, with the latest TiVO software release (2.5.1), owners can now skip 30 seconds at the press of a button.
select.play.select.3.0.select turns this on.
then hit the -> button.
now if only i could put in 29 instead of 30.
"Population 1,656"
In a related action, a coalition of TV networks filed suit today in the Southern District of New York against LazyBoy. The basis of their suit is that LazyBoy recliners make it too easy for people to get up from their seat during commercials. An attempt to negotiate with LazyBoy by having a piece of hardware added that would prvent the chair from being raised during a commercial was rebuffed.
:) :)
The TV networks are saying that "technologies such as the LazyBoy recliner hurt our intellectual property rights. We need to be able to make money so we can continue to give you the quality programming you deserve and have come to expect from commercial TV."
:)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
No, you have the option of paying a single fee for a lifetime (of the box) service.
They have not been using any sneaky opportunities to bomb you with ads (ReplayTV does though, when you hit pause, unless they took that out), unless you count the network showcases which are "just" a spot in the menu where networks can (pay to) put their shows, and it is pretty weak, just a slot in the main menu. Oh, and the "TiVoMatics" which let advertisers link a commercial with a show, and if that show is on a channel you receive, and isn't over yet, when the commercial comes on it puts "Press select to record" in the corner of the commercial (even if you are FFing, you only get about a second to notice it an hit select at that speed though). Personally I like TiVomatics, it means if I see a commercial for an interesting TV show I don't have to look it up, I can just hit select...
Plus unlike, say, the I-Opener they have not been hostile to the hackers. They have given tacit approval to adding larger disks, and turned a blind eye towards people adding Ethernets. The most they have said about people ripping mpegs off their boxes is "that's not cool", no lawsuit threats.
If you don't think TiVo is worth the money, that's fine, don't buy one. They are not evil though. Really.
Copyright infringement? For skipping the commercials?
Have I become some hardened copyright infringing criminal for fast forwarding past the commercials when I view my taping of Politically Incorrect at a saner time than the 12:05 AM that my local network chooses to air it?
Here's hoping that the courts will kick this case out and say (LOUDLY) that they are NOT in the business of telling manufacturers what features may be included in their products.
``You can have my fast forward button when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!''
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
How ironic that it only took two weeks after SonicBlue won a Technological/Engineering Emmy Award for the Advancement of Television for the big boys to crackdown on them.
That may not be a coincidence.
The Emmy will have attracted the attention of a lot of people in high places at the networks, and a lot of potential customers as well.
Two weeks seems about right for putting the filings together. And even if they were already working on it the publicity may have encouraged them to get off the dime and actually file, before their opposition's position was improved by an expanded customer base.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't watch sitcoms. I have no idea what "The West Wing" is. I hate turtlenecks and tweed, and am lousy at chess. I prefer t-shirts, jeans, and sweatshirts, and I play Quake3, Alpha Centauri, Kohan, and Tribes 2 (among others). In my spare time, I'm a graduate student. ;-)
I don't wait for the evening news when something breaks. I get the info on the 'net, or from public radio stations. On Sept. 11th, PBS did as good of job as anyone else. What I really don't need is more "talking heads" news shows and their "Attack on America" logos. I prefer intelligent and informed discourse, both of which are usually missing on commercial television. The old McNeil-Leherer news hour, and whatever they call the current version without McNeil, are the best news shows I've seen on television. Still, I prefer BBC news for worldwide events -- as with CNN, they've got their biases; but there are no banner ads, and they do a better job of covering international events.
I forgot about Animal Planet, though. It is a decent show, and that reptile-guy rocks. I like to watch it at Christmas time when at the in-laws. They have cable. They also get Fox Sports, and I can watch some soccer that way. But Animal Planet isn't enough to make me buy cable.
Heck, there isn't a TV show out there that would make me buy a new TV if our current TV broke. However, our N64 is a good enough reason to buy a new TV (or frame grabber).
*My* PBS only argument isn't bull. I only watch PBS (except for Animal Planet and some soccer at Christmas). Believe it or not, one doesn't even need to watch TV! And I still call myself an American *gasp*. At any rate, my argument was that the previous posts suggested only PBS had a business model that wasn't affected by the "commercial skip" button on the ReplayTV.
-Paul Komarek
It's probably not hard to get the basic functionality to record shows on disk. But I'm pretty sure that is less than 1% of the engineering work that goes into one of these products. There are zillions of features on top of that that makes it convenient, usable and fun. Just a few: Remote Control, switching your cable box for you, knowing all the tv schedules, live buffer, etc.
The other thing is that a 1.4 GHz Athlon system costs way more than a good Tivo. Don't expect to be able to use it for anything else while it's recording. And a Tivo is always recording.
OTOH, if you want to be able to burn your favorite shows to DVDs, this is the only way to go. Well, actually, I would still get the Tivo, and record whatever I wanted to burn off it.
I lived with a tape freak. He traded audio and video tapes with people all over the world. He recorded every episode of the Simpsons and, oddly, In the Heat of the Night, and cut out every commercial from every episode. It was basically a second job for him he spent so much time on it. So he was 'profiting' (the studios regard trading one copyrighted work for another copyrighted work as 'profiting', even though you could have seen it for free yourself, even could have copied it for free yourself) from their work. Specifically because he was adding value by taking out the commercials his product was more attractive.
:)
He'd leverage collections of these prepared shows into trades for bootleg concert recordings, whole tours, all kinds of stuff fans have always wanted and media companies have always REFUSED to provide for sale. I mean sheesh.... how do you stop bootleg concert recordings? A la Pearl Jam, sell professional versions. The point is - the technology to allow this kind of activity existed with the VCR in the Betamax case. Stripping out commercials, making copies (unlimited copies too), and profiting from the work. Replay is on slightly more dangerous grounds than Sony was - Betamax allowed you to copy, but did nothing to encourage you to trade copies. Had Sony organized tv show tape swapping events, the Supreme Court may have decided differently in that case. Replay seems to be actively encouraging trading. That is a bit shaky, but it's definitely one point on a slippery slope. VCRs ALLOWED all the activity the studios are now saying is forbidden in a DVR. Love that progress
The real problem with the studio's arguments is that THEY GIVE THEIR PRODUCT AWAY FOR FREE! In fact, they WANT to encourage as many people to see it as possible. Their shows are beaming through my brain right now. Their claims that they 'own' it just don't match common sense. When you give me something for free, I feel free doing whatever I want with it. The problem is they need to change their ad system and they're too stupid to realize it. Instead of blocks of ads, which are a distraction from their show, and which people hate, and which encourage people to change channels, they should follow the prescient advice in the Truman Show - product placement should occur for a fee INSIDE of the context of the show. Instead of Nike paying Michael Jordan to hawm their shoes, they should just pay NBC to have Jay Leno wear them on his show. As soon as ads aren't something that can be stripped off a show and discarded, the studios wouldn't have to worry about people making ad free copies and giving them away. With ads embedded in the product their business model could dispense with blocks of annoying ads and could embrace this new technology, the spread of copied tapes of the Enterprise would be a selling point for the network instead of a lost opportunity for profit.
So what do you want to bet? Will the TV studios meet the challenge of new technology by redefining their business model into something better, or will they force more draconian laws on us preventing us from doing things with digital media that we can already do with analog media? WHY does nobody in the business community have any vision?
To make a claim for redress under copyright laws, the copyright owner must show ACTUAL loss, not possible loss, not potential loss. Otherwise they have no recourse under copyright law. Which is why they're so in love with the DMCA which makes no mention of loss, only of 'unauthorized' access.
TV studios need to realize that people hate ads. They need to start getting companies to pay for product placement in tv shows rather than selling blocks of time for companies to try to promote themselves. If they do this their revenue model will be immune from the ad stripping they fear.
If they choose not to do this, they're idiots. They seem to think they have a right to follow the same business model that prevailed before people had vcr's or net connections and still profit from it. There is no such right. Adapt and stay strong, or fight change and wither. Why does America's business community have so little vision?
TV stations live in a competitive world. The shows that have the most WIDESPREAD appeal have the best ratings, and are rewarded with higher ad revenue. What has the most widespread appeal? Anything that hits on our evolutionary hotspots: sex, danger, food, 'save the children' memes. People pay attention to those things not because they want to, but because millions of years of evolutionary programming compells us to. TV stations play to that. Is it their fault we're only human? No. But obviosly in a free market, evolutionarily driven system, we will produce shows that pander to humaniy's basest desires. We have to realize that this is the system we've set up, and shows like 'Married with Children', 'When Animals Attack', and 'Scariest Police Chases' are the inevitable result.
State sponsored systems like the BBC don't judge a show based solely on ratings. In the BBC, quality of the show actually determines whether it stays on or not. They also have an evolutionary system, but they kill shows with low quality, not shows with low ratings.
The networks are starting to feel entitled, forgetting that the public owns the airwaves. We used to force networks to show things about elections, other matters of public interest for free. Now they charge the politicians tons of money for runnign campaign ads. Ridiculous. I agree, we should re-take more control over the airwaves.
I see a lot of people going on about the Fast Forward section. The suit is about the fact that ReplayTV has an Ethernet jack and some kind of File Server in it.
The actually claim to support "Video sharing with friends and family owning ReplayTV 4000 units."
This is what has everybody freaking out.
This is a boring sig
Something I've often thought cable providers should offer is channel-by-channel packages... I'd like to have only Cartoon Network, Discovery, and Animal Planet please. A few dollars a month would be a fair price for those select channels that I might actually watch.
Guvegrra?
The Tivo runs on just a 50 MHz PPC! But then the encoding is done by a dedicated chip.
What strikes me is the resilience of the hard drives. A Tivo is always recording signal. One Gig per hour 24 hours a day. I'm surprised the drives hold up as well as they do. I'd guess a regular PC accesses disk about 1% of the time, and even then only 5% writing.
... All your commercials are belong to us.
i am a soviet space shuttle