Studios Forcing ReplayTV to Collect Viewing Info

superposed writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has articles here and here about an ongoing court battle between ReplayTV and several major media organizations. A federal judge has required SonicBlue, makers of ReplayTV, to begin collecting data on how customers use the systems to swap shows and skip commercials, and hand the information over to the studios so they can make a case that copyrights are being infringed. SonicBlue is appealing the ruling, saying that collecting the data would violate their privacy policy. " It seems strange to me how much legal hoopla SonicBlue has been dragged through considering how many of these things they've actually sold. Update: 05/05 14:22 GMT by M : See the previous story as well.

Comments

Great...

[kingharrison]

Now everyone will know I watch Powerpuff girls.

Here's how.

[qslack]

ATTN SonicBlue:

Hand the media companies what they want. With one catch, however. Send them the files in Claris Works 1.0 on 600 floppies. Don't forget to accidently catch a virus that just happens to latch itself onto Claris Works files.

from the man-that-sucks dept.

[Inthewire]

Taco, I never knew.

Question

[rant-mode-on]

When they get all the data, are they going to be allowed to pick out the bits they want, or are they going to be forced through all the irrelevant mundane data that they're not interested in?