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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.
The content industry sues..and sues, and sues. Rather than working things out with the developers, they bankrupt them with legal fees. Then they step in, buy the company for cents on the dollar, and either kill it, or castrate it to where it does nothing like it was orginally designed to do.
"The studios" have, of course, decided in advance that SonicBlue is a criminal enterprise, and that the Replay is a tool of the devil. Now, SonicBlue is being compelled to help "the studios" prove their pre-selected conclusion.
Not only guilty until proven innocent, but they have to help win their own conviction.
Sucks.
To quote Chuck D, "Fuck Hollywood"
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
How many they've sold is irrelevant. The studio's know that this kind of thing will probably be popular someday, so now is the best time to fight it. Why wait until lots of consumers have them and like them? They're expensive and rare right now, so they're going to have an easier job ahead of them. I have a replayTV and I like it better than TiVo....my only complaint is that the menus are too sluggish when you're scrolling through or trying to bring a different one up, but I suspect that has been improved since my model is over a year old now.
Simple. Tivo has a commercial skip that the user engages (fast forward) and the ReplayTV has automated it. ReplayTV has made it too easy to ignore the media's wallets so they have drawn their collective ire. Tivo is unfortunately waiting in the wings to see the result and has not noticed that whatever paintbrush is used to color SonicBlue will be spattering on them. We as consumers are now too lethargic to protect our privacy and other rights, so we don't bother to fight it any more than to post a few blurbs in a message board. So all that is left is for these media giants to become more powerful as they steamroll over everything. So laying down for a raping is what the market will bear at this time.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Our legal system is exactly as screwed up as people think if people realize it often consists of as one overworked, possibly incompetent judge being presented "facts" by two lawyers of varying degrees of competence.
The amount of randomness that adds to the system is anathema to justice.
--Blair
or to put it more simply, it's not a 4th Amendment violation.
Theres a tarriff we all pay when purchasing VHS cassettes, that will supposedly pay the offset in profits lost to piracy.
Yeah, even if you are just recording your sons first birthday party, you were already assumed guilty of piracy.
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I sig, therefore I was.
1. It does not matter if it is a civil or a criminal case. It's the court ordering them to do so. Sonic Blue could not be ordered to tap your phone w/o raising 4th ammendment issues.
2. It's a government organization ordering the collection - which is in all relevant ways equivelent. If the government could circumvent the COnstitution by ordering or paying private companies to do dirty work for them, the Constitution would be irrelevant.
3. The fact that the end users are not being investigated is more ammo for the 4th ammendment argument. It's no different than a court ordering QWest to tap the phones of all of it's customers and to report to the nature of all conversations, along with a number which personally identifies each customer.
4. Unique ID numbers are functionally no different than names. They are both tracible back to a single identifiable individual.
Scythe