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SonicBlue Ordered to Spy on ReplayTV Viewers
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Got outrage? According to a story on SiliconValley.com, a federal magistrate has ordered SonicBlue to track ReplayTV users' every click to see what they're watching, recording, skipping (commercials) and e-mailing to friends. The info is to be given to the entertainment industry control freaks who are suing SonicBlue for allegedly abetting copyright violations."
First Disney sponsors Hollings bill. Then Disney does this to SonicBlue users.
BOYCOTT DISNEY.
Don't buy Disney products. Don't go to DisneyWorld, Don't go to Disney flicks.
My first reaction to that is "Damn! I can't believe they're doing that!" My second is, "Yes I can, it doesn't surprise me a bit."
If you expect the worst of people, you'll never be disappointed, but you can sometimes be pleasantly surprised.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Where will this all end ? I read today that the entertainment industry considers skipping ads as "stealing" content that we have "contracted" with the networks to receive! These types are really getting up my nose. Excuse me while I go down to CompUSA for another 100GB drive for my downloaded mp3's :-)
Gotta pay 'em back somehow, huh ?
is slashing their own throats.
It's an escalation of arms at this point. Total war. Never in our histroy have we been subjected to such comprehensive privacy invasion.
It doesn't matter that the data doesn't say Mr. Smith watched such and such. The thought that the entertainment industry will have access to this data implies that they will use it against the viewers. Incredible.
Maybe they should read what the court has said in the past about privacy and viewing habits.
Here is the link to Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984
Assholes.
There are times that DDoS makes sense...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
According to a story on SiliconValley.com, a federal magistrate has ordered SonicBlue to track ReplayTV users' every click to see what they're watching, recording, skipping (commercials) and e-mailing to friends
In other news, a federal magistrate has been ordered by ReplayTV users to kiss their collective ass.
Ok I'm stuck, do I avoid Sonic Blue's PVR's because it will invade my privacy, or do I buy PVR from Sonic Blue, because they are as outraged about this as I am. I suppose I could record all kinds of crap on it too, that would at least subvert their data.
Hmmm, maybe if we could get everyone to do nothing but record Tech TV for 24 hours as a protest of our privacy being violated.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
This really goes back to what slashdot covered earlier how AOL-TW CEO said that PVR users were stealing when they skipped over commercials, but it also applies here... the users are not bounded to a contract to watch the ads.
It's also interesting to see the hypocrasy when AOL-Time Warner's CEO denouncing products like TiVO and ReplayTV while AOL is making deals with Tivo...
It adds somewhat of a twist when Sonicblue is ordered to infringe on its user's privacy and not TiVo.
Sigs are for losers
It strikes me that the whole music/movie piracy issue could be solved in one fell swoop if the industries involved simply lobbied government to add another 2% onto income taxes and then give the music away for free.
Sony, BMG and the others could then set up "free download" sites where Net surfers could drop in and grab as much music as they wanted, absolutely without further charge.
The huge revenues thus generated would be paid back to the recording/music industries and apportioned according to the number of downloads of each album/movie.
Likewise, some of the money would be aportioned to video libraries to compensate them for the losses they'd suffer.
Hey, it's a win-win-win situation.
The big companies get massive wads of cash. They can then pay the artists. Copy-protection is no longer an issue. Plus, you could then afford to listen to (and perhaps grow to like) a much wider range of music/movies.
Even though I'm just kidding, I suspect that it's only a matter of time before someone seriously suggests such a plan.
Just look at the lame technology/IP bills proposed already!
This is no more an infringement of copyright than those companies that create blank CDs, video cassettes, etc, or anything that allows you to make copies, also double tape decks, those sony cd burning stereos, and well anything that allows you to produce a copy. They all have legitimate and illegitimate uses, depending on the user. If you bring one down you have to bring them all down.
Plus I dispise the fact that they have been ordered to spy on us.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
How anal retentive can these freaks get, its becomming more and more impossible not to give out your personal information, now they wanna know what people are watching...rewinding....then watching again....then rewinding...then watching again. HOW STUPID ARE THEY, I can save them the trouble and tell them right now. ITS PORN!!!!!!!
_______
Death wish, n.:
The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it t
Translation : What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
"The suits allege these features effectively deprive networks of the means of paying for their programs -- advertising revenue. And they allow people who paid for premium programming -- say HBO's ``Six Feet Under'' -- to send it to consumers who haven't."
Does this remind anyone of Senator D^H^H^H^H^H Holl^H^H^H^H 's antics???
SB to advertisers: Boo Friccing Hoo. I've been putting up with your advertising on various media formats from TV to Internet for 25 years - and I HAVE NEVER BOUGHT A SINGLE PRODUCT BASED ON THAT ADVERTISING - simply because I am capable of deciding what I wish to buy and can do my own research.
If I sound Pissed Off, I am. If your product can't sell to the people within your market who might actually look at, research, and make an intelligent decision on it, than I have no sympathy nor pity for you.
Make a Better Product. Deal with it. The masses are waking up to your brainwash-style marketing.
Get your crap off of the media I pay for! Welcome to the Internet Business Model - I pay for NO ADVERTISING, not MORE.
(Yes, sad acronym, that - IBM = Internet Business Model)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
When young, the media constantly warned that America should be ever vigilant for threats from overseas enemies who hated the American people.
Welcome to the new millenium. The enemy is wealth and control, they have no borders, and it appears they have won.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
... but as much as this pisses me off (the invasion of privacy part), isn't this exactly what the industry needs?
Seriously, once stats like this are collected, either they'll realize that this isn't a threat (and then really start pushing digital tv, stop suing companies like sonicblue etc..), or we'll be right back to where we are right now.
I understand the slippery-slope argument and all, but how the hell are you going to convince tv networks that piracy isn't happening unless you do something like this?
And if piracy *is* happening, wake the fuck up. It's illegal. You knew the free ride wouldn't last forever. Being able to freely copy anything you want isn't a constitutional right, even under the guise of fair use (which, by the way, isn't even established by the constitution).
From the article:
The court ruling also requires SonicBlue to track individual users -- not by name, but through ``unique identification numbers.''
This goes further than what Tivo does, as Tivo sends no unique ID with the data it collects. Wholly anonymous.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It says they are collecting data anonymously by ID number. This is no worse than when you use a shopper's club card at the supermarket or when the scan your license at the bar. This is something that Sonic Blue has already reserved the right to do, so they shouldn't be pandering to us with this "spying" propoganda just because it's convenient at the moment. Both sides are being unethical if you ask me. I don't agree with this kind of data collection and it's becoming near impossible to avoid without paying penalties.
You do not know anything about bussiness people. You think if they get a 2% tax they'll shut up? Certainly not - they will keep the money and try to find other ways to charge us with improved services. Oh yeah and that 2% will slowly increase as well.
Oh sry i just read that you were kidding. Still a bad idea imo.
The entertainment industry is fighting a losing battle here. Anyone who has purchased a TIVO or similar hard disk recorder will absolutely never go back to watching ads.
I personally have a hard disk recorder, and since having it I cannot stand to watch live tv, because I now percieve how much of my time is wasted by ads.
My guess is that eventually the entertainment industry is going to have to modify their revenue system, because no one will willing submit to ads again after being free of them.
What is interesting is that the TV industry will has a system allready in place that could be switched to an ad less system. All they would need to do is charge more for cable or satellite service, or something along those lines. They would probably be forced to take an income cut, because people will not be interested in paying very much more for ad less TV then they do for regular TV today.
If media corporations think they have a problem now, wait until hard disk recorders drop below $200....
They are facing a losing battle, just like the music industry.
Ok so many things about this piss me off I don't really know where to start, but I had to get it off my chest;
/.? Check this judges financial statements next year, I bet he has a nice "donation" from an "un-named source".
:)
First off, the lesson we seem to be teaching our youth today is this:
If you have lots of money, you can buy anything, judges, freedom, not guilty verdicts, senators, government.
Everyone wonders why my generation, (stuck between the 70's crap er disco and GenX) is so frigging jaded. We see it, we see it, but we can't do anything about it.....all I gotta say is, when it's OUR generations turn to run things, look out, cause obviously, the generation doing things now plain DOES NOT GET IT(TM).
One last (-1 Redundant) thing:
I bought the damned thing, didn't sign any contracts that state I must watch commercials, *OR* that you would be able to see my viewing habits. BTW, are viewers being told their data is being recorded? As Bart would say, I didn't think it was possible for something to suck and blow at the same time.
Any IRS agents read
Bah, piss on them, just wait til it's our turn to screw up the country
Sent from your iPad.
I mean, it's fairly obvious that they need this info to prove that users skip commercials and send shows to each other, but I fail to see how this makes either of those activities illegal... Yes, it's poor form that the judge ordered this data gathering, but I don't see that it makes much of a difference to the bad guys case.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I know that there's a RePlay hacking community, though it's not as big as the TiVo hacking community. Anyone know how to completely mess up the data in my RPTV about what I've been watching and how I've been watching it?
I had no idea that not watching commercials equated to stealing televison shows. My cheesy RCA VCR marks commercials after recording and skips them during playback. This has been around for a while. How does ReplayTV make it different?
So what happens to people who have sent a copy of Six Feet Under to their non HBO subscribing friends? Will they get jail time for this?
'Same speed C but faster'
Neither of those examples is either "anonymous" or "aggregate."
As I've told some of the marketing droids so confident that they would "never" misuse information gathered by shopping cards, if they truly respected my concerns there would be a basket of shopper cards at the service counter and I could just grab one and walk away. They could collect all of the information they wanted about me... except who I am. (That's also why I pay with cash, etc.)
But when they want me to fill out a form, then it's not anonymous. It may be pseudonymous (if I use a bogus name and address), but that's not the same thing as anonymous.
As for aggregate data, that's what the stores collect when they ask you for your ZIP code and cross-correlate purchases, ZIP code and store location. It would be the number of people in a square mile (or greater) watching HBO at 10 PM on Sunday night. It's not something tied to your individual PVR.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The problem is that sonic blue were gathering the informastion to begin with.
Since they already have access to the info it is normal court procedure for the court to request that they preserve it if it may be evidence.
In the article a Sonic Blue manager is complaining "we are being asked to invade the privacy of our customers". No buddy- you are already doing that you are being asked to share the data.
As long as somebody is gathering your info your privacy is being invaded. It doesnt matter what their privacy statement says, because:
a. you can never know if they follow it or not
b. even if they follow it once there is a court order they have to turn it over.
Court orders and search warrants cannot be stopped by privacy statements.
There is no reason why a some tv device has to send information about the viewing habbits of the user. If you want privacy get one that doesnt.
The fact that there isnt one on the market only proves that companies dont really care about consumers that much.
By the way do you guys think that if someone figures out how to port linux on the Xbox it could be programmed to be an open source tv recorder? That would be nice.
Lately having open source devices has been the only way to ensure your privacy.
Now I could be wrong, but get this. The industry has no way of knowing exactly how many people actually watch their shows. Sure based on a sample of people who agree to be polled, they're able to estimate. And based on these estimations they're able to charge for advertising.
If you think about it, at this point they have their money. Nealson has already counted these views, whether or not commercials were skipped via conventional (bathroom) means or electronic means. I find is suspicious that these companies are now asking for this type of information. I could see the various companies who advertise complaining, but they don't seem to be. And if they did the TV industry would say that since taped views don't add to the ratings, those views aren't represented. So either quit bitching or we'll have to count those views in our ratings and raise rates accordingly.
Either way I don't really see how the industries argument carries any weight. This is a game of averages folks and advertisers know this. Plus the industries accounting mechanism rounds for the industry anyway. I just don't see what their problem is.
Article time:
"Attorneys for the studios say they need this information to determine the extent to which the ReplayTV 4000 allows consumers to steal copyrighted movies and television shows."
So, in reality, they automatically assume that everyone who uses this is stealing. Nice, guilt until proven innocent.
Could we please get a judge who says it is not my responsibility to legislate your problems. If you are losing money, change your business model. BTW, I don't believe I have *EVER* EVER...YOU HEAR ME YOU MARKETING F*cktroids? EVER bought something because I saw it on TV.
Sent from your iPad.
Let the
"Honorable" Charles F. Eick know what you think of his decision:
give him a call at (213)894-5234, fax to(213)894-3335, or write him:
The Honorable Charles F. Eick
United States Magistrate Judge
United States District Court
United States Courthouse
312 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
The court order seems to only be aimed at collecting aggregate data on user habits (though perhaps specific habits of users will be available as well), but regardless, the information is only going to be used in a civil suit against Sonic Blue.
It seems to me that neither the court, nor the plaintiffs, can use this information against any of the individual users in civil or criminal suits because of the lack of proper search warrants. While this case is still very concerning for the privacy violations, it only really gets interesting when you analyze what the data is used for and who obtains it. I think the court system, if they are not extremely responsible with controlling this data, is going to leave itself wide open to class action civil suits.
But it's so cool :)
"Chief, can I hold my gun sideways? It looks so cool."
I wouldn't care if anonymous data was collected much. I wouldn't mind too much if a random number was to be assigned to my actions. I will mind being called "Mr. 34F78AC1426B" in the court room when charges of piracy and stealing are brought forth.
My deepest sympathy is out there to the owners of ReplayTV owners.
While I don't like the concept of people watching what I do, in fact I sorta want them to do that with my PVR, since what gets aired is based on ratings. If they see that people record this show and not that one, then maybe the shows I watch will stand a better chance of sticking around. And if they see that I backed up to watch that good commercial and skipped all these sucky ones, maybe commercials will improve. Yeah, I'm tilting at windmills, but one can dream...
An order like this one, one that affects third parties, needs to be kicked up to the district judge level for a more thorough examination. Hopefully some outside party will file a motion to do that. Anyone whose clicks are being recorded is probably an eligible party.
That's a little naive.
Of course you (and I) will go back to regular ad based TV the day our Tivos are made illegal.
If they are geniunely outraged, they can :)
open the protocol they will be using to
collect the data and look the other
way when people subvert it
Considered harmful.
So, now a few geeks know that they're being watched more carefully. They can tell other geeks, who will make a fuss, and maybe even the general public will hear about it. Maybe you have to do some protesting or set yourself on fire or something.
Then, everyone who gives a toss will modify their behavior (Skip every commercial or watch only one show over and over. Or set up a robot arm to push the skip button once a second. Get creative.)
Then, when SonicBlue goes back to the court, they can say that the data are obviously flawed, because the rats knew they were being watched and changed their behavior.
SonicBlue must've been keeping data previous to this, anyway, they could compare and prove the behavior changed soon after the ruling.
Also, anybody know how this machine would store all this data? I can't imagine it streams it off to HQ everytime you push a button. Sounds like good hack possibilities to me. "Your honor, viewer #23489A somehow managed to skip 10,000,000 commercials last weekend. I think if you just arrest him the TV industry will be good to go."
I read this article which talks about Dick Wolf's (creator of Law & Order) philosophy about paying TV actors. According to him, people don't watch TV shows for stars, they watch it for the good writing, and he claims this is different than movies. But the studios don't believe it and are willing to pay the actors on friends 1 million dollars each. I'm not saying friends would still be popular if they were all suddenly replaced, but the fact is, TV studios, even now have pretty slim profit margins, so if ad revenues went down across the board, most likely actors' salaries would go down too, because profits couldn't get any lower. I think it's pretty sick how the government thinks they need to baby the TV and movie industries, as if they'd suddenly collapse without sticking to their age-old business model.
I'm sorry folks, your brains are now property of Disney. How many images of Mickey Mouse have you illegally recorded in your memory? How many movies, books and songs? All the knowledge and experiences in your memory are stolen intellectual property. Confess now, and we'll offer you a special discount rate to license your brain back for limited periods of regulated thought.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You can imagine these people getting spoiled the last few years, and then when our disposable income becomes less disposable, they wig out. Has anyone else noticed how prolific our corporations have become at perverting capitalism? Enron, Worldcom, AOL/TW. And those are just the tip of iceberg that we can see.
I see a trend of corporations looking to government to bail them out of jams they created for themselves, and I don't like it. It's funny that some want government regulations (RIAA, MPAA to name a few) and others don't (MSFT) AND they're all wrong!
SonicBlue (and Tivo) laid the foundation for this sort of action with their EULA and origional policy of collecting user data ("anonymous" or not). They removed this functionality when, suprise, there was a public backlash. But by then, the damage is done. They have demonstrated the ability for those who would abuse it.
Enter the entertainment industry. Sure, I'm dismayed that a court would force this kind of action. But I'm sad to say I'm not shocked - we've all seen this kind of attitude from the entertainment industry and the legal and political system that seems to favor it, and these kinds of tactics.
But let us not forget that it is the current PVR industry (SonicBlue AND Tivo) who have created the industry standard that allows invasion of consumer rights. It is their short-sightedness that gave the entertainment industry this option to push for in court.
They created the slippery slope and despite their attempts to get off of it, they will now be forced to continue their slide.
This signature intentionally has just seven words.
Wow, talk about being outraged at SonicBlue. My company was recently denied a TradeMark Application on the name SolidBlue because SonicBlue beat us to the punch in Canada.
Now they're in the news? Who are these guys? Satan?
Ace
Consider: A US Federal Court -- not some backwater municipal or state court -- has just ordered a wholesale invasion of citizens' privacy and personal information without a search warrant.
Consider further: This action was ordered, not in the name of "National Security" or "Anti-Terrorist Investigation", not on behalf of the government at all, but on behalf of a monsterously wealthy corporation bleating about "theft" and illusory "lost profits".
It has begun. The last bulwark against tyranny has been swept aside by a sitting Federal Magistrate without the slightest qualm.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I offer the following admittedly foolish, idealisic counsel:
Close your wallets.
Buy nothing.
See no movies. Rent no videos. Buy no music CDs. Purchase no computer software that isn't Open Source/Free Software (remember, the BSA members are in on this, too).
"But what do I do for entertainment?" Easy. Fire up your Web browser and/or go to your local government building and start digging for incriminating dirt on every elected official you can find. Once you find it, publish it. Read the dirt other people have dug up. Learn as much as you can. Discovering incriminating secrets about other people is endlessly entertaining, especially with that whole "betrayal of the public trust" angle going for it.
And once you've learned everything you possibly can about the people ostensibly representing you... VOTE!
Too many Attorneys General simply refuse to bring malfeasance charges, so relying on criminal prosecution to delete these people won't be very effective. Get out there this upcoming November and vote the bastards out. They are your employees. They are betraying you and selling you out. They are embezzling your earnings and selling your personal secrets to the highest bidder. Fire them. Hurl them out the door so fast that you can see a redshift on their ass.
Apathy about our government is a luxury we can no longer afford. We will only have one or two more shots at this before the courts decide that EULAs really are binding, that your property isn't really yours, that the monopoly of copyright trumps Freedom of Speech (q.v. Keith Henson) and Freedom from Unreasonable Search and Seizure (this case). At that point, we all become serfs, and, "Your papers, please," will become a phrase heard all too often in our places of work and our homes.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Actually, the RIAA (and likely MPAA) both want and don't want government regulations depending on the situation.
Hilary Rosen of the RIAA has received awards for her fight against censorship and Government intervention / control over what her member companies can sell. Obviously, this interferes with the revenue stream and can not be allowed.
At the same time, Rosen is a champion of new law and court intervention concerning content found on the Internet. If it circumvents the revenue stream then it can not be allowed.
Sure, its not shocking. But I still find it an interesting observation.
Fuck you!
don't you see that the problem isn't disney? the problem isn't the music industry..... There are fundamental issues here being persued to insane extremes by money hungry soulless corporations.
IF THE POPULATION HAS FREEDOM POWERS LOSES THEIR ABILITY TO CONTROL THE POPULATION.
IF YOU CAN'T CONVINICE JOE AVERAGE THAT HE IS WORTHLESS BECAUSE HE DOESN'T HAVE A SHINY NEW CAR THE WHOLE MODEL FALLS APART.
CENTRALIZED CONTROLLING POWER STRUCTURES ARE LOSING CONTROL.
the battle is coming, don't boycott disney, boycott it all! Throw away your TV, spend your time doing what YOU want to do and what YOU want to think about in any way that YOU can.
YOU have the power and create your own realities. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone realized this.
My question is, if this isn't a capability of the existing system, how can the courts order a company to develop specific software for spying on the users?
What if being rushed through development it turns out buggy? Who pays for the QA? How long of a development schedule does this version get?
Besides the 100 reasons why I think this is all wrong.
Since when did courts start doing software? If I we're them and they get forced to do this, I would make the courts pay for it!
ok, well I'll explain myself a little...
For one thing the post seems rather incredulous due to the fact that the author's knowledge of Linux, Open Source (or OSDN as he likes to call it), and computers in general varies from decent to, well...
I called AOL to have them send me a Linux version
yeah.
i excitedly bought Corel Linux Delux with Wordperfect for 79.99 at CompUSA
hmm.... signs of trouble emerging...
And just to throw in a final little tidbit:
Microsoft made a standard, and it prevented me from the hassles of Linux and hardware, maybe the OSDN should work on Plug and Play in the OS
basically my thought was that this was either a really funny joke, or a REALLY confused person. I mean who the hell just goes out and starts throwing money around and blames it on his operating system? looks like He's "out" $500 on a printer and video card he already owns, because he decided to try Linux.
Ok, I just realized I wasted way to much of my time explaining this. Yes I was a bit harsh, (that last line was a paraphrase of a line out of From Dusk Till Dawn) but sadly I have little sympathy for stupidity/ignorance these days when getting information is as simple as typing a word into a little box at google.com.
It's a civil case. The right to refuse to self-incriminate is only available during criminal proceedings.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
you think that advertisers are going to let you get around watching commercials by just skipping through them? you think that they haven't thought of all of your ways to skip them already?
there are new methods in place already to take care of this, and have been going on for years.
images are placed, products are placed, entire scripts are rewritten to take products into account. it's integrated advertising, and it's where television is going.
you won't be able to watch your tv show w/o getting force fed advertising. now the smart companies will do this so that you don't hate them. but how many you think are going to be smart about it?
lol, i majored in marketing, they are well aware of the limitations of commercials in today's tech society, and are already well on the way to fixing the problem.
one little example. remember sienfeld? those boxes of cereal in his apt. were digitally changed based on the market and who paid the shelf space, and that was years ago. they're better at it now, and you never notice 90% of the time unless you've been trained to watch for it.
and for those saying that they've never bought a single thing due to advertising, you're flat out wrong. you may not realize it, but advertising has measurable, consistant effects on sales in markets. if nothing else it will make you aware of a product that you wouldn't have known about otherwise.
-alcimedes
Ok the disclaimer is that I watch about 2 hours of T.V. a week (at a friends house).
Hey man, I would be more then willing to pay for what I watch. I frankly would love the oppotunity!
I wonder what the networks would feel that my contribution would be to offset adverts?
Anyone know, because I would pay it if reasonable.
so until this blows over, everyone watch the commercials and fast forward through the shows.
:)
That'll give em some data to munch over
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Otherwise the court order would be pointless.
So now companies are responsible not only for making sure their products don't violate copyright or patent laws, but for making sure their users don't as well. Everything gets so much easier when the burden of proof is placed on the accused.
When this all wraps up (probably more than a decade from now) I see one of two possible outcomes.
1) We will be transformed into an amazingly media-rich society, powered by the Internet. Artists will no longer need record companies for publicity; they'll sell out their concerts just by putting their music online for free. Broadcasters won't be able to make billions by simply selling the same damn product to every person in the country; in order to turn a profit, they'll have to come up with services that can be individually tuned to fit their customers' needs. (God forbid an aging industry should have to change its business model to remain profitable; that's just not the American way!)
...or, 2) The American judicial system will become a puppet for the disproportionately wealthy entertainment sector, making every other industry in the country accountable for enforcing copyright law (except for the copyright holders--why should they do any work, right?). America will cease to be the driving force in technological development, and hordes of companies and individuals will leave the country for someplace a bit more level-headed. (I know I will.)
Place your bets, people.
So it would appear that we again have a case of a company believing that they have a legal right to preserve their business model in perpetuity.
This is, of course, the same thing that the RIAA thinks: they've made lots of money in a certain fashion, therefore they are OBVIOUSLY entitled to the continued existence of that revenue stream.
Pure rubbish.
Central District Court Magistrate Charles F. Eick, You are found guilty of privacy infringement and contributory aid to privacy infringement.
Let's talk to our friends at ReplayTV. I can do a random access/programming/adskipping log generator for them. They will run it in their machines as a daemon and it will generate data as the real surveillance would, but inside some predetermined parameters. Easy, ain't it? It's the same as doing a Carnivore jammer... set up 2 machines in generating HUGE amounts of artificial network traffic, eliza-style ;) I've seeing it done in ISPs to "beef up" log analysis, and once in a private company to justify firing a guy. Hehehe. Is this wicked or what?
In Germany and other European countries, you pay extra for every CDR blank and similar 'taxes' on CDRW drives, PCs and HDDs are in the discussion.The money is distributed among the labels according to market share. The same system (different institution) is applied to printers and copiers.
For the money I pay, I'm granted rights of fair use. I can make personal copies and I'm even allowed to share with personal friends. You can also use text excerpts for educational purposes.
Oh - and it looks like we are also getting some DMCA-like laws that make it illegal to circumvent copy protection. Even if we're explicitly charged for the right to copy the content.
This is crap. Nobody in their right mind would ask VCR users to report back how many commercials were skipped, yet Sonic Blue is expected to comply with this from a judge. I'm not a PVR user, but I'm outraged at the sheer lack of respect this judge is demonstrating. I'm sure these numbers will be aggregate numbers, but honestly I think the judge should be given one of these and have his entire viewing habits made public record, including his thieving ways of fast forwarding through commercials.
I seem to recall more than one failed "dot-com" business model that was set up to spy on users in this way ... emphasis on
failed. Neilson (et al) can't give that kind
of information, this is a marketeer's wet dream.
If the entertainment industry can get someone else to spend a small (or larger) dot-com sized fortune collecting this information, from an unwilling set of customers to be sure ... it's
no wonder they're trying to do so.
That's what's really going on here: not just a massive invasion of privacy, unjustified by even a (so-called) PATRIOT act level terrorist threat. Not just trying to scare customers away from PVR vendors on a wholesale basis, while undermining the future growth of the market.
But also finding someone else to pay for a level of market information collection that would otherwise be impossible to collect, since the financials don't pass a first level smell test and customers would never willingly commit to that level of surveillance.
More and more I am waiting until a series comes out on dvd (or HK vcd) and buy the whole series. A HK vcd set for a whole season is usually $25. No commercials. Or, if it is something I really want I get a dvd set (legit + better quality;costs a ton though). Either way, I am not getting brainwashed by commercials anymore.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Owners of Replay need their own lawyer!
File for an injunction based on the Cable Act of '84. IANAL but could you not get someone that is to draft a 'form' injunction request(Call in the EFF?)? Send a few thousand of these to the magistrate to bolster SB case. Call it a legal DDoS. At worst you should be able to win the ability to opt-out and at best you will stop the whole deal.
SD
Don't wait to get screwed, fight back!
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Here are a couple of sites that I use to keep up with the hacking scene for a Replay 4040. These sites are about using your Computer to download the content from the Replay. I wonder if SonicBlue can track what you are taking off?
AvsForums (Great site in general)
PlanetReplay
It really makes a 4000 series worth the money. Using the Ethernet port, you can make a computer emulate a Replay Server.
marks
Cancel your cable subscription for 2 months and tell them it is because of the sonic blue trial.
That'll wake them up!
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Maybe I better elaborate on that a little bit. I am not the Super Piracy King. My collection of 'real' vhs and DVDs is unreasonably large.Most won't tv shows come out on DVD ever (or hd vcds, for ebay nuts who would want to buy from them) but there is alot of stuff out on vhs. Once you watch a tv series on vhs/dvd you won't appreciate watching live cable so much. My point is that there are alternatives to watching cable associated commercials.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Isn't it as simple as buying a TiVo instead of a ReplayTV unit? Granted, it's not the company's fault that it now has to invade its users' privacy, but that's moot -- the fact is that users' privacy will be knowingly violated going forward. Or am I missing something?
They now have real damages to countersue for. I was going to buy one of the units (they really look cool) but now refuse to. I will not submit to this sort of monitoring. Period. They lost my sale. Am I alone? I am sending a message to this effect to privacy@replaytv.com, informing them of this and suggesting the countersuit. Maybe if they get more reports of real damages, a counter-suit will be filed.
.sig: file not found
This may be the first, excellent counterexample to the the standard policy of writing a company's EULA or privacy agreement such that, by default, it reserves every theoretical (even if currently unused) right the lawyers can think of to the company -- just to be safe.
As this case shows, you may actually be forced through a court action to mandatorily perform all of those reserved rights; apparently it can serve as evidence that you've asserted you can technologically accomplish something, even if you never expected to. Watch out, legal staff...
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Here's part of the actual order. On April 26, Judge Charles Eick of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, gave SonicBLUE 60 days to:
(1) take the steps necessary to use their broadband connections with ReplayTV 4000 customers to gather all available information about how users of the ReplayTV employ the devices, including all available information about what works are copied, stored, viewed with commercials omitted, or distributed to third parties with the ReplayTV 4000, when each of those events took place, and the like;
(2) implement Defendants' offer to collect available data from a second source -- the MyReplayTV.com web site -- about how users of the ReplayTV employ the devices, but for all time periods for which that data can be collected, rather than just for a short period;
(3) provide the foregoing data to Plaintiffs in a readily-understandable electronic format and provide any technical assistance that may be necessary for Plaintiffs to review the data;
(4) provide Plaintiffs with all documents about Defendants' consideration of what data to gather or not to gather about their customers' uses of the ReplayTV 4000; and
(5) provide Plaintiffs with any other documents (such as emails or logs) reflecting what works have been copied with the ReplayTV 4000 and how those works have been stored, viewed, or distributed.
Now who gets all of this data? The plaintiffs in the case against SonicBLUE (the makers of the ReplayTV 4000). Roughly, Time Warner, HBO, Warner Brothers, TBS, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment, WB TV, MGM Studios, Orion Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal City Studios, Fox Broadcasting, Paramount Pictures, Disney, NBC, Showtime, United Paramount Network, ABC, Viacom, CBS, Columbia Pictures, Columbia TV, and Tristar. The plaintiffs are also ordered to pay 3/4 of the cost of gathering the data.
Come on. Our courts have no business ordering a company to spy on its own customers just because big media wants to put the company out of business. We at the Privacy Foundation saw a lot of consumer outrage after we released our report about TiVo's privacy disclosure and practices. TiVo did a pretty good job of responding to the situation; they spent a lot of time with the press, and they wrote a white paper explaining what had happened. (We still have some gripes about their system, but that's another story.) The point is that companies are very sensitive about tweaking their customers' privacy, because they know customers don't have much patience for it. So when the court orders a company to spy on their customers, it's basically a punitive act. The customers will revolt and get mad at everyone. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the discovery of evidence phase of a lawsuit isn't supposed to be punitive.
In this case it's worse than just a privacy squabble. Either the court doesn't understand or the court doesn't believe ReplayTV's repeated explanation that they simply don't have the information demanded by this order. See, in April 2001 some months after our TiVo report came out, I showed a ReplayTV exec my traces that proved that their current model also collected some type of viewing information. This scared them, and in May 2001 - before the ReplayTV 4000 existed - they disabled the collection function, since they had never used the data for anything. This is what they told me, and this is what they've sworn to the court in testimony.
Now the ReplayTV 4000 is a different product than the one I investigated, and ReplayTV has said that they never reenabled the old tracking code, nor did they update it to make it monitor the newer features - like automatically skipping commercials and sending recordings to other ReplayTV 4000 units. But that's precisely the type of data that the plaintiffs are demanding to see in this case!
So what we have is a court ordering SonicBLUE to prepare a new software release that implements new spying features, and then ordering them to force it upon all of their customers, out of fairness to Big Media in their case against them. Considering that SonicBLUE has probably updated their customers' software only a few times ever, this is like ordering Microsoft to create, distribute, and maintain a new version of Outlook that checks to see if any of its users are sending MP3s as attachments!
I guess this is a sneak preview of the type of consumer broadband "protection" we can look forward to in the very near future.
What happens next: SonicBLUE is planning to file papers with the overseeing judge in U.S. District court objecting to this order. If that doesn't go their way, then I guess they'll be working on a new software release.
David Martin
http://www.cs.bu.edu/~dm
well, when i got my card for the giant eagle, they sent me a card and two of those keychain things. one day i was in line and the person in front of me asked me if they could borrow my card since they lost theirs (we get a discount when we use cards). i pulled out one of the keychain ones and said sure, keep it.
so no they are tracking the speding habits of a 23 year-old white guy and a middle aged black woman.
-- john
It's a good thing that the manufacturers of horse-drawn carriages were unable to sue automobile makers out of existince. This "horseless carriage" completely messed up their business model, didn't it? And damn it, they have a RIGHT to keep making money even when something better comes along! "Judge! You have to watch Ford, and Olds, and Benz! Their plan is evil and YOU CAN'T LET THEM MESS WITH OUR PROFITS!"
No, not quite.
Look, this whole thing is pissing me off to no end. I pay for satellite TV. What I do with those TV signals once their decoded IN MY OWN HOUSE is my own damn business. If I want to capture every frame on my computer, print them out, and piss on them... I can do that. If I want to put them on video tape, toss the tapes into a bonfire, and dance around it chanting anti-Disney phrases, fine. Skip commercials? Fine. Watch commercials again and again. Fine.
How are the capabilities of a ReplayTV unit at all different from what I can do with a VCR, a video tape, and the US Mail? What are they going to do? Sue VCR makers out of existance? Oh wait, they already tried that!
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
In essence they (Disney again) are claiming that EVERYBODY that owns a ReplayTV device is using it for illegal activities. Guilty until proven innocent.
This sounds like something that should require a search warrant.
You can't just invade people's privacy like this. Cops need a search warrant to invade the privacy of a murderers or rapists home. I guess the real criminals have all the rights (after all, they're the ones that make the laws, so of course they'll protect themselves).
If I were a software engineer for SonicBlue and ordered to write this software, I'd either quit, or write a backdoor (ie a way to NOT have your choices tracked) and tell my friends and family about it.
How can they tell if you click the commercial skip button that you're really skipping a commercial?
I guess it's more for the "sending what you recorded to another box" feature. What if you're forwarding it to your box in the bedroom where you don't have cable? I see no problem with that. It's like taking a VHS tape from one room to another.
I have a Panasonic branded Replay 2000. I'm really intrigued by Tivo Series2 and Replay 4x00, but I can't justify jumping to this generation, I'll upgrade in generation 3.
Now, one of the problems with the Replay and Tivo is that while you can conveniently time shift with them (great to not miss shows and have them waitting for me when I get home at ~9:30 PM), you can't conveniently space shift. When I move out of my dinky apartment and into a large apartment or small hour, I'll have more than one television. I then have the choice of building an advanced audio/video distribution system (which are VERY cool, BTW, but don't exist for DTV/HDTV and DD/DTS signals, just NTSC/Stereo), or placing a Replay/Tivo in every room.
Being able to send from one ReplayTV to another in the house is a useful feature. It's part of an attempt to also sell multiple ReplayTVs to people. My understanding was that the shows could be sent over the LAN or Internet. LAN would be quick, a few minutes to grab the show, Internet would take a while.
Sometimes my friends miss shows that I want. Sometimes my IR blaster fails to change the channel and grab the show. I'd love to be able to have someone send it to me so I can watch it.
Ironically, with ReplayTV, I don't spend commercial breaks in the kitchen getting more food. It's probably helped me lose 2-3 lbs., reduce my television watching, and increase my commercial viewing. Sure I only watch really well done and funny commercials, but I used to watch no commercials.
For any industry people watching, grabbing the last advertisements on action shows/movies may help. I got yelled at by the fiancee for over skipping and seeing the resolution of a cliff hanger then going back that we usually end up watching 1-2 commercials to avoid it.
Alex
So what about a company that sells DVRs that don't talk over the internet or collect information? Maybe. It's sounding like the because SonicBlue simply makes these things, they can be forced to monitor them against their users wishes.
What sort of company could one form that would be immune to such a request? Selling kits with a little software? Selling the hardware only? The software only?
But that's what they WANT you to do. Tivo(as great as it is) is in bed with a number of entertainment companies.(NBC and TW/AOL for example) This entire situation was created to kill Replay TV so the entertainment industry's golden child(Tivo) would have a clear path to victory.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
As a lot of people have already pointed out 'stealing' copyrighted material (e.g. a movie in digital form) is not the same as 'stealing' a physical object (e.g. a bike). The former bike owner has lost his bike, the movie owner still has his copy of the movie.
It occurs to me it might be a good idea to introduce a new word other than 'steal' to emphasize this difference.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
build a box that had the abiltiy to record every single click a user makes...AND everyone that you freaking e-mail??? Ok, the courts were wrong, but SonicBlue should be questioned about its overly zealous logging system. I mean, just because it is possible to log every person who scratches his or her butt during a commercial, doesn't mean you should.
... turn.
The box has to send this information back to someone. How hard would it be to filter that infomation out?
Usurper_ii
Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way
Ron Paul
It is patently unfair to sue someone because they make a product that is _too useful_ (such as a PVR, mp3 player, file sharing program, etc.).
The law is not there to guarantee the viability of a business model. If advertising fails, then use something else (such as product placement), but do not seek to destroy or block technology that gives the users more power. If I were to invent a car that ran on cold fusion, the oil companies would not have a legal case against me, even if I end up destroying their business model.
Of course, this has not kept companies from trying to save their business model in the past. A good example of this is the "Red Flag" laws that were passed in the 1860s to block the automobile industry:
(taken from http://www.dana.com/corporate/history/history3.ht
I keep burning karma writing this, but...
Boycott Star Wars. There are no other movies where a lack of geek support can make a big difference. If we boycott Star Wars, they might actually notice.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Idea...how hard might it be to reverse-engineer the format of the data going to SonicBlue, and salt it with all sorts of stuff? Might it be possible to give them enough false data, perhaps even pertaining to multiple users, to make the data useless to those who are demanding it?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
P.S. There is no spoon.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm sorry, but the idea that anyone c/w/should pay more money for television service is preposterous! The only real way that people can get more value from TV is by eliminating the middlemen, and their share of the profits.
Fundementally, these industries all believe they have something that people want and need. People go out and spend thousands on a "home theater system!" Disposable income aside, WTF?!
I would love to see a statistical breakdown of (1) distribution of number of hours people watch commercial television, premium television, and pay-per view
(2) comparison of this data to video/dvd rentals
(3) distribution of cost of entertainment systems, qty. per household...
Anybody know where this info is freely available?
It seems to me that this order is wrong for at least two reasons :
A) Discovery in a case is normally limited to parties turning over information to each other that is in their posession - not being ordered to go out and collect new information and then turn it over.
B) It's already been ruled illegal to spy on your wifes internet surfing habits - yet suddenly the movie industry is allowed to spy on your viewing habits - I don't think so !
With any luck this ruling will be overturned very soon.
I do not own a Replay or a Tivo but I do own MANY VCRS. Everything I watch has been previously recorded. I will never own anything (knowingly) that was designed to spy on me! It has always pissed me off that Replay and Tivo were allowed to build such an invasive and easily exploitable privacy invading device! I have no sympathy for the people who own them and their compromised privacy, they knew what they were buying. I am also not surprised that the entertainment industry has found a way to use this technology against us! I am only surprised it has taken them so long.
.02
Every day our privacy and rights are being compromised by the rich and powerful corporations who are allowed to buy government protection for their stupid business practices. I am so sick of their attitude; "we made billions before so we are entitled to continue making billions regardless of what is/has happened in the real world"!
It would be great if somone could come up with a "patch", that could be easily installed, would skew the logging beyond the point of uselessness, and send a message like "encroachment on my privacy strictly forbidden". There is little chance of this I am affraid. There is also little chance of stopping the entertainment industry from dictating the conditions of our surrender. After all they have the money and the (paid for) government on their side. Enjoy your remaing "fair use" while you have it.
On the bright side, after the entertainment industry has succeeded in hosing all of us (their customers) with all of their restrictions, regulations, hard-wired encryption, etc. etc. we will have more time to read books or go to the park. God knows it will be way to difficult to watch a sitcom or listen to music.
Just my
They offer TiVo owners the choice to Opt-out of supplying the information if they choose.
From TiVo's DVR Privacy policy I'm cool with that. I haven't even chosen to Opt-out. I hope I have some influence on the ratings so we get more decent shows.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
If you have a TV set and live in Germany, you have to pay a TV tax. This still involves privacy invasion, because the inspectors can come to my house and check if I have a TV.
There's higher judges? right?
This just in:
Widespread rioting broke out today as the broadcast industry united in a lawsuit against "the people" charging that, according to a member of the legal team, "the remote control blatantly facilitates the circumvention of our clients' bullshit by the mooks in this country."
Conpensatory damages are being sought in the amount randomly generated during a late night dart game to represent as accurately as possible, the revenue losses that have accumulated over the past thirty or so years. This came out to just over $4.587219*10^16.
He would include protections, from these kind of orders in his new privacy bill, but considering that Disney wouldn't like that, I doubt it. Seriously people should write their Senators and Congresscritters about including/adding these protections against this kind of privacy invasion in ANY legislation proposed right now.
Keep them off my computer, tv, and me, thank you very much.
This is why DIY PVRs will be the best choice. A home-built recorder running on open source (GPL preferred) on one's own PC, with tv listings pulled from a reliable, public source, and with NO spying of any kind, will be the answer. I know there are various projects like that out there on sourceforge etc. - perhaps someone can create a nice component-shaped device to do all this?
sulli
RTFJ.
I'm no Replay hacker but you'd think there could be some way to prevent the release from being loaded.
sulli
RTFJ.
I am so used to my TiVo that even when I am in the car listening to the radio, if I hear a part of a news story, or something else that catches my ear, my first thought is to rewind. Only then do I realize that my car radio has no TiVo-like functionality.
But wouldn't it be cool if it did? Does XM Radio offer this, by chance? It should be rather easy to do with some modest components. Audio takes up far less storage bandwidth than audio+video. A TiVo device for radio ought to be able to buffer 30 minutes of a dozen preset stations, simultaneously, so that you had a pre-recorded buffer no matter which of your presets you switched to at any given moment.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I was thinking this morning of expanding this very thought into an essay. This is the only argument against corporate pillaging of our rights that might sway conservatives.
Legislating a business model must harm the market, just as other laws that regulate the market do.
Patents and copyrights exist to encourage innovation, not legislate profits. FCC licensing keeps me off the airwaves to protect them as a public resource, not to ensure that Disney makes money.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Actually, no, that would not hurt them. They are not aiming Star Wars at 10 million geeks. They are aiming Star Wars at 800 million teens worldwide.
If you want to hurt Disney, bug them. Send Disney nastygrams; Tell your congressman you hate them; make a web page that spells out the greed. Or even better, scavenge their best talents, encourage their competitors, tell the Fast-food operators you don't appreciate their marketing tie-in with Disney, yadda yadda
"Piter, too, is dead."
By the way, I put up the relevant court document PDFs on my Web page (where I also managed to capitalize SONICblue correctly): http://www.cs.bu.edu/~dm/pubs/replaytv.html
A friend of mine who has hacked his Tivo verified that Tivo already does exactly this: every click by the user is sent to Tivo, along with the exact context, in an XML format.
Ok I don't have the cash to upgrade from my replay tv 2020 to the new 4000 series but I can skip commercials and I do it all the time. The question is why collect data on something you already know the results to.
** NEWS FLASH ** The results are in 99% of replay tv users press the skip button to not watch commercials. They are in violation of the you must watch the commercial policy set forth by cable providers.
Why collect this information? To be completely fair shouldn't the federal magistrate put observers in the homes of non-replay tv owners to record the went to the bathroom, went to the kitchen or dare I say changed the channel during a commercial violators. They are in violation of the same must watch the commercial act as well.
Shame on all of you who don't watch the commercials. You are getting all of us in trouble. My advice is if you have a replay tv 4000 and you are being tracked show your support and press the skip button say an extra 1000 times just so they get clear results. We don't watch commercials!
mail video tapes using the good old USPS...
We collectively agree: there is no collective.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
You do realize that the conservative viewpoint is to have as little government control over people as possible? The whole idea that we make our own decisions and call our own shots. Just because the conservative viewpoint promotes big business does not mean they're out to take your freedoms away. Remember, Bush wanted to give the extra money you gave the government (tax surplus) back to you. Gore wanted to put it in a "lock box".
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I'm sensing that Turner networks are going to lose this battle, but in the long run, the viewers are going to be the real losers. The advertisers are going to realize that nobody is actually paying attention to the spots, (Technology advancements or not... except for the SuperBowl of course...). Next thing you know we'll end up with banner ads on all of our tv content. Maybe this would be a good use for that extra screen real-estate on the 4:3 TVs once all the programming switches to 16:9... Then the TiVo engineers will figure out how to mask the ads, so the networks will decide that they need to "integrate" the advertising into the programming so that it can't be ignored. Sports teams will have to wear "ad-jerseys" (And tonight on TNT, its Pepsi vs. Coke in the most anticipated basketball game of the year!), and your favorite TV roll models will start developing almost addiction-like preferences for certain products... It's a brave new world...
Dupe posts are
That would be the Libertarian view point. The conservative viewpoint is....well, conservative. In general, use government to regulate your morality.
That they promote big business is a side effect of our political structure. Republicans are just more honest and up front about it than Democrats.
Oh, and don't fall for that, Republicans are going to give me my money back stuff. Both groups will suck you dry in a heart beat. The difference is one group seeks to use the money to set up income redistribution programs. The other group seeks to use it mainly to build cool toys (read: weapons of mass destruction).
In short, if you really want to be consistent in your political stance, vote either Libertarian, or Green....
--
Stupidity is the only crime punishable by nature.
Main stream media has picked up on this. Story here
What is the magistrate judge going to do with this data that could possibly explain why he went along with this idea? What do they plan to compare it to, my AT&T box that stays on sometimes when I'm not watching? What about when I vacuum or do the dishes or go to the bathroom during the commercials?? How about when I record something on my old VCR and fast-forward through the commercials when I watch it later? The studios don't have accurate information on us regular cable watchers, so I don't see how this could end up fair in court. We're all about to be taken for a ride....
I don't have money for a $2500 Replay, but I'm furious about this anyway. Let commercials compete for my attention on their own merits- I'll watch that iMac commercial, or the Yahoo one with the dolphin any day, because they entertained.
A judge mandates that a company spy on its users? How long until Kazaa spyware is not just legal, but mandatory (and the programmers at Lavasoft are sent to prison)?
What happens when some magistrate decides to make the exact same order and passes it to Microsoft.
``Microsoft is hereby ordered to record all programs run by users of their operating systems, and also record information about the files that their OS users copy and transfer.''
How long till *this* order goes out?
There's a reason my windows install doesn't know about the existance of the internet or what my name is.
What does Disney have in common with LucasArts? NOTHING!
What can you expect Disney to do if you boycott an unrelated company? NOTHING!
How much thought did you put into your post? NONE!
No really. I have thought this out. I've decided that I want to minimize how much I spend on movies and DVDs and videos. I haven't given them money in about 6 months and I intend to continue. I pick starwars because it's the one thing that people want to see. I actually want people to boycott ALL movies and music (or at least minimize their purchases). All the dumbshits who complain about the DMCA/SSSCA/CBPDTA and then go out and go see the movie are the stupid ones. I just want to back up my bitching with (a little) action. It won't matter, but I'll feel better about myself.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I don't make a distinction between movie companies. Disney says what the rest of them are thinking. I would rather that people not see any movies or buy any music at all. I recommend a boycott of Starwars because 10 million geeks might make a noticeable difference. Especially since geeks are repeat customers (at least I was seeing the other ones several times each in the theatres).
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
People with Replay 4000s should destroy this as a method of collecting data. Please spend ten minutes a day just hiting the commercial skip button on your remote over and over. If enough people do this for a few weeks it should be enough to distort the collected data and make it useless for any real world analysis of consumer behavior. Could you imagine a court or media company looking at the data. They'd say something like, "What the hell are these people smoking??? All they do is press the button over and over and over!!" Maybe we could add a few billion erronious clicks.
What's shocking is that this is an analog capture device. First of all, it goes against the the notion that somehow digital copies are different, since this device doesn't get "pristine" digital copies of the content, it just captures them from analog inputs.
And that's where this gets really interesting. The Content Cartel can only infer that their precious content is actually being traded by circumstatial evidence. Sure, the box sent the right IR commands to set a cable box to channel 2. And it recorded for three hours while channel 2 was showing Return of the Jedi. But unless they force the box to send them a copy of the video as well, they have no way to know that the video on the Replay's disk is actually Return of the Jedi. For all they know, I could have the video input connected to a webcam pointed at my fish tank. And while that's copyrighted, (Berne Convention, you know) it's not copyrighted by THEM.
So they have only circumstantial evidence of infringement.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
Hurl them out the door so fast that you can see a redshift on their ass.
Most humerous. I'm definetely going to have to remember that one.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
ethereal wrote: " ... So while you can't really expect the /. readership to agree on anything, I think it is more reasonable to expect the /. editorial staff to put forward a cohesive editorial policy on what they support and what they oppose. They have a "bully pulpit", but right now the message from that pulpit is sadly inconsistent."
...
/. editors like (read "prefer") free / Free software. :)
...)
;)
Hmmm. Lots of people seem to feel the same way, but it's unlikely to happen. Why? Because we (Slashdot editors) don't necessarily agree on many issues, and we live too far from each other for frequent boxing matches or something
- I think it's safe to say that all the
- We have differing ideas about free speech and what exactly that includes. (For instance, is "commerical speech" easily separable from non-commercial speech? Would you like to buy a Nixon-face showerhead?)
- We have differing ideas about the role government should play in people's lives.
- potaytoe, patahtoe
For instance, I think that the State should stay out of Microsoft's hair, and that it is Microsoft's perfect right to raise their prices stupendously (raise! raise!), bundle a blender along with each copy of their operating system (Hey, banks give toasters) and use their dominance in the operating system field to push hair creams and gels. That's because in a truly free market (the U.S. market is partly free, better than most), you have an important right to be annoying, and to offer bad deals. This is important because it's what makes it possible for others to enter any given market. If Microsoft Office cost $4000 instead of $400 (that's about today's cost, right?) but with the same features as it has right now, more businesses would be willing to try competing products. (Look at the cost of software 20 years ago to see what a good deal today's software is by comparison. At least, if you consider it a good deal
The U.S. government at the very least (YCMV) has a Constitutional responsibility to benefit the commonwealth, and to that end, I think Free software is a more rational way to spend tax dollars (which are borrowed) than is spending on Microsoft or most other proprietary software, because software is part of that commonwealth. If the Federal and assorted State governments made it a policy that all software purchased on these borrowed dollars (and ones with specifically listed allowed uses, too!) had to guarantee at the very least continued ownership by the purchasers (taxpayers), would anything other than open-source software (GPL, BSD, whatever) even fit the bill? It takes a much more indirect route to prove that a given State employee's copy of Office is providing a benefit to the commonwealth than that $400 donated to KDE, GNOME, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, GNU, or some other producer of explicity free software would be. Rather than 2 hands taking away, perhaps we could reduce it to 1 and a half.
Note: this is a long-standing rant. Probably you don't agree, but I'm not kidding -- I really would like to see a free market in software, and in everything else, so long as no coercion or fraud is used. And to the degree that we should tolerate the somewhat-necessary evil of government, it should always be evaluated to see how it's extra-market activities can nonetheless be used to benefit mankind. This is one way.
As the logician on the MP&tSftHG soundtrack points out, "I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original point." But I think it's still on-topic there
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So, people are paying for the content. Given that fact, why is there still advertising?
Without some sort of advertising, each channel would cost at least $5/month, up next to the "premium" channels such as HBO and Di$ney. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not pay $200 in cash per month for basic cable.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why not homegrown TV broadcasting via the internet.
So you're talking about the type of narrowcasting that goes on public access channels. Interesting. Go on...
WE create our own programming
Unless it becomes illegal to own a camcorder without a license, because camcorders could be used to pirate a movie during its theatrical release.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How did they eventually convince us that it's perfectly normal to pay $40-50 a month for JUST the copper wire?
By threatening to raise the monthly rate from $1 per channel to $5+ per channel, like the "premium" channels.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Government's dirty, special interest paid-off hands are reaching too far this time.
I don't give a fuck, because a. I do not have a TV. b. I do not go to movie, especially Dizme. This rule applies to my 4 kids. This knee jerk PC reaction doesn't go anywhere. Every move like this just makes me glad that I am not some salivating dog of american media. It is not big business without customers that can't think for themselves, or have you not learned anything from the Microsoft experience.
/., the land where hypocracy lives.
That is what I love about
You wrote:
...
;)), including some made by people who belong to or support organizations I don't agree with ... it's a tradeoff. I enjoyed watching Lord of the Rings more than I would have enjoyed depriving the movie industry of a small portion of my admission price. The world isn't always convenient that way ... I prefer Free software, but if I found a greater benefit from using source-secret software, would I do it? Sure. I might gripe, and look for alternatives, but we all draw different lines in different sandboxes.
"But this does happen to be my viewpoint - that your (editors as a group) great articles exposing the DMCA are undermined by your weekend movie reviews, etc., etc. The lack of a coherent message is OK if you're just reporting the facts, but by adding (often opposing) editorial viewpoints (both implicit and explicit) throughout the various stories, the overall impression turns out to be more schizophrenic than just incoherent."
Well, each of us (people in general, slashdot editors included) have various viewpoints on various topics, some of which jostle uncomfortably with each other. When you look at stories posted by several people, all of whom are affected by this, the result is bound to look a little strange if you're looking for consistency of message! We don't have ideology meetings or anything to make sure we present a single common face to the world
I like movies and music (a subset of them, of course
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5