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

Partialy SonicBlue's fault?

[Tide]

As a ReplayTV 4000 owner and operator of Planet Replay a content 'borrowing' site, Im appalled by all of this. But one has to wonder - SB made sharing only possible through the use of unique internet IDs and their servers to translate and initiate the P2P. If the P2P didn't require their server, there would not be any way for them to track what we do as easily as they can now.

I'm glad SB is not just rolling over though. Just like Diamond Rio and the MP3 player suit, the Digital PVR suit needs to hit courts and law set, good or bad. People keep referring back to the Sony timeshifting case, but the problem list that was analog, this is digital. It needs to go to court and get settled, but having SB collect evidence for the plantiffs is just ridiculus.

Here is where the problems are

[Sc00ter]

I've seen a lot of posts about why not TiVo and why Replay.. Here's the deal:

1. TiVo by default does not remove commercials. You either have to hit your fast foward button, or enable the 30sec skip backdoor code. And either way you still have to be there to do it. The new ReplayTV units remove the commercials automatically so you don't even know they are there at all.

2. ReplayTV allows sharing of problams to other ReplayTV units (also to computers running a program to make the ReplayTV think the computer is another ReplayTV). Now, again, this isn't a big deal until you realize that I can get HBO and record Six Feet Under or Sopranos and now share them with people that don't pay for HBO. This would be in effect the same as buying a movie, and copying it for others that don't own the movie.

Also, TiVo does collect user data, but it's ANONYMOUS, it does not link you to your TiVo unit unless you call in for service and they half to (they have you key something in on the remote). You can also make a 5min phone call and be removed from this.