Slashdot Mirror
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.
Instead of making a case of their own, the "content-industry" has conveniently gotten the judge to order the other party to make their case for them.
Sheer genius, but also very depressing. Our legal system is more screwed up than people think. Way more...
Who did what now?
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.
Could someone reply to this and answer a question I have, which none of these articles has answered? Why SonicBlue, and not Tivo? What's the difference between these two PVRs that lets Tivo get off scott free?
I can't afford either, but from all I've read, they're the same thing: digital VCRs. Maybe ReplayTV should have copied Tivo.
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.
qslack.com
"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.
Isn't there something in the legal system that says a defendant may not be forced to testify against himself? It sounds like that is what's going on here.
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.
Doesn't this fall under the 5th Amendment somehow? They should have the right to avoid incriminating themselves. The burden of proof is on the suing party to show their side as being true. Or is corporate America somehow immune/unbefitting of the constitutional laws? They are an entity, too, composed of real people, whether you like them or not.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
The 5th Amendment applies only to criminal cases, not civil cases. The court may force any potential witness to testify in a civil case, regardless of whether or not it would incriminate the witness.
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.
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
Taco, I never knew.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
But on the subject of commercial skipping I would point very strongly toward the better Panasonic VCRs and similar models that have automatic skipping. My techno savy 70 year mother got the first one in my circle of contacts. Now I have influenced several people to go that way. A simple demonstration is all that it takes. The only person that did not get a Panasonic after I showed them the feature in action was buying a low end deck for his toddler.
We have been working on watching Seinfeld for once and for all -- All episodes in order, as collected by Tivo, dubbed to VHS for additional buffer space. The broadcasts are frequently out of episode order. The Panasonic VCR is virtually 100% effective at catching the commercials with the only annoyance being about 50% of the time it does not detect the final short segment of the program as being non-commercial content.
Also Panasonic VCRs have about the best rating for reliability in Consumer Reports.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
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.
Free Mac Mini
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?
A federal court is requiring a private entity to invade the privacy of private citizens -- fascinating. I wonder how the Replay TV customers feel about their conduct being tracked at this degree of granularity. Is such even within the scope of ReplayTV's agreements with their customers?
It would be nice to get a class of consumers to intervene in that action, or to seek some sort of extraordinary write, perhaps a writ of prohibition to keep this court from doing to American citizens what no other branch of government can do.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Charles Eick told GA to create software within 60 days to monitor everything customers shoot at, everything they miss and any bullets they transmit through others.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
People watch TV to be entertained, they don't watch it for banal adverts. The advertising industry can produce interesting and amusing commercials, as is witnessed by the various programs that show only funny adverts from around the world. Also, didn't TiVo stats show that during the last superbowl the ads were replayed more than the game (and here)? Its time the industry woke up, and stopped boring people.
OK, I know, this is not a criminal case (and IANAL), but this seems incredibly obviously illegal for a judge to make this request.
This judge is asking Replay/Sonic to gather data that will be used against themselves in a civil action. This should be the primary defense instead of "it goes against our privacy policy" non-sense that any judge would just tell them "so, modify your policy and process my request."
Just wondering, shouldn't right to privacy be a default value to respect of the consumers?
Meaning if a company wants to invade your privacy, they should be required to get your permission rather than you having to fight off every F*&Kin company that seems to assume they have the right to invade your privacy. Rather than the "if you don't respond, we then assume we can invade your privacy" it should be "if you don't respond and agree to invasion of your privacy then we legally can't invade your privacy"
This would certainly reduce alot of concern and stress to the people along with reducing the sales hype that uses "your privacy is our concern".
Wouldn't privacy interest be consistant with not responding?
Bell South called me the other day wanting to sell me some sort of new "privacy" service. I didn't listen to the complete sales pitch because by simple logic I shouldn't have to buy my privacy.
War on terror......which seems to have brought privacy issues to the limelight --- what could be more terrorizing than having to buy privacy?
sounds like buying protection from the mob...
Sounds like the Judge isn't familiar with the US constitution to me.
According the the fifth admendment, one does not have to provide information that may be used against them in a court of law.
How is it that this judge does not know this?
Have they ben following the MS anti-trust case to much?
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.
------------
I sig, therefore I was.
In the previous article on this, many suggestions were put forth to skew the results of the information gathered. Don't do any sharing outside your own personally owned devices. Record shows, then fast forward through them and watch the commercials only, and be sure to backup and watch the same 3 seconds of a paticular commercial several times. Fast forward through the whole show, then do it again, to the same show. Record shows you hate then delete them without watching at all. For shows you paticularly like, run them two or three times, don't fast forward or mute the commercials. If even 10% of the people who own one of these, does at least one of these actions, SonicBlue can probably get the data thrown out as unreliable, because the lab animals knew they were being watched and changed thier habits or at the very least, you can make shows you like appear more appealing, because they are being watched several times before being deleted.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Of course everyone screams about this without reading up on it. The judge is requiring SB to report the content viewing habits of users of the 4000 series Replay box. The problem with it is the automagic ability to skip over commercials. This always pisses off the TV industry because they can't charge X amount of dollars per commercial slot at certain times if the advertisers can show somehow that the network's audience numbers are too high. The judge is requiring SB to provide statistics on commercial skippingh abits of users in order to decide whether their ReplayTV box actually screws the television networks over as they claim. The home recording cases in the 80s allowed people to use VCRs to record stuff and watch it later (called time shfting) because the commercials were preserved. A recorder that automagically removes commercials doesn't fall under the ruling of those cases.
The retarded part of the whole thing is the TV networks conception that not watching commercials is somehow evil. They don't get money from me watching a McDonalds commercial (even though that is how they charge advertisers), they get money from me buying a Big Mac and a Coke. The only reason they're going after PVRs is because they fuck up their audience statistics. If a show has a specific rating they can assume a certain number of people are watching and charge advertisers accordingly. All an advertisers has to do in negotiations is whip out a paper that says there are a million ReplayTV and not have to pay the netwok as much money as they are charging. It's greed on two fronts screwing over ReplayTV users.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What popup? I have _never_ seen a popup on this site. You're going to http://slashdot.org, correct? If you're getting popups, then maybe you ought to run Ad-Aware and see if you have spyware installed.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Tune your Replay/Sonic Blue to the Teletubbies when you're not watching. Cut your TV off, and let the commericals come through...When they raise their advertising rates to Superbowl levels, advertisers will quit paying, and Teletubbies will be canceled. Falwell will be elated, and he'll shut up. This way we get rid of two of the scourges of society.
step 1: gather data
step 2: apply trivial content protection
step 3: hand over encryted content
step 4: require subscription service to view data at $0.75/user's info (fees would be on a per-lawyer basis...sharing of the data would be expressly prohibited).
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I just wish we had ONE prosecutor with the guts to file a RICO suit against the xxAA. Or file barratry charges, or something!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'm worried about this whole monitoring thing, especially in light of the earlier comment by the CEO of Turner Broadcasting to the effect that people who don't watch commercials are stealing programming. If the content industry wins this one against Sonic Blue, what's next? Will some astute judge order webcams installed in our homes to make sure we don't skip out to the bathroom during the commercials? Will our telephones have embedded anti-content-theft software that deactivates them during commercials, lest our attention be illegally diverted by conversation with real humans?
When Napster was going down the tubes, as a news reporter in Nashville, TN, I did a piece on the company that was propped up by the labels and nailing Napster.
Napster was required by law to send all of the relevent material to the company that was handling the lawsuit, which I can't name right now, I don't think they exsist anymore, I might be mistaken.
SO THEY DID. IN HARD COPY.
Napster mailed long, old dot matrix printouts to the office in reams that (I kid you not) were at least three and a half feet tall.
Moral of the story... they complied with the company. And the company couldn't afford to compile all of the infringers by hand but instead tried to have a chilling effect on Napster by getting a few of them scared.
So my suggestion would be paper.
Besides, I cannot believe that this is even happening. This is extremely "Farenheit 451" in the way that the television companies are trying to legislate the way we watch television that they supposedly give away for free.
If they start recording information on what we watch and what we skip they will soon be telling their advertisers that we don't care about their commercials and we don't like our shows interrupted.
... just seems that the more information they gather the less likely it will be that they will sell advertising (for the prices they do).
Seriously, I've been thinking about this one for a while. There is only a chance that a viewer will stick around for the commercials. If they start showing customers (ie: Pepsi, McDonalds, yatta) that we flip or "skip" then the advertising customers will not want to pay up.
Advertising is a crap shoot. Anything from banner ads to newspaper ads to tv ads. Even if they (us) see them it doesn't mean they care.
I'm 110% for Nielson style ratings. I want the network to know I like Futurama before it's too late, I don't want Night Court to go out of syndication again...
But who knows. Most companies spend their advertising budget on "conceptual" ads that don't even tell the customer where to get the product. When was the last time you saw a Pepsi commercial which said: "Go to your local Rite-Aid for Pepsi this week!" ? Of course that is a bad example. Simply tell us where to get the product, how much and why it's better. Save Mrs. Spears for the porno (that we are waiting for).
Get your Unix fortune now!
Tivo is obviously headed in the same basic direction. There's a reason the new Series 2 units have USB ports (and unoffical support for USB->Ethernet dongles in the software).
- 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 think the point may be that TIVO *does* collect user selection and programming data.
:P
Yes, they do, anonymously. This order goes even beyond that, in that a unique ID will be assigned to each users data. Tivo is capable of doing that, agreed, but they do not and their privacy policy forbids them from doing that without the user's explicit consent...
This is a heavy blow to privacy, and probably illegal according to the 5th amendment. I sincerely hope they tell the judge to fuck off and take it to a higher court somehow. Stupid legal system.
- 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.
Aren't tobacco commercials banned?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
...I skipped this story last time because I didn't read that part of Keller's statement.
He claims that VOD isn't on the side of the betamax case, but what is the point? I enjoy VOD right now from Time Warner/AOL [the people who pay Keller]. I also enjoy it with no advertising what so ever.
Why is it that I get no ads with VOD? Because I fucking pay a monthly fee. HBO on demand, iControl - both are funded directly by me, the consumer. (iControl is a pay-per-view based model)
These technologies are a step forward because it gives us what we all want. We want media, free of ads. Subscription based viewing is nice because you get what you want for a price you can swallow. It's similar to the pay-per-single music idea. No ads, it's on when you want, you can fast forward and rewind - and his parent company is selling it to me.
How can he complain? Especially since I'm watching "Contact" on a Turner station and the volume for commercials is about 20% higher....
Get your Unix fortune now!
Have the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969 and the Little Cigar Act of 1973 been repealed? What about the Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act of 1986?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.