Judge Says Sonicblue Doesn't Have to Monitor

MoD writes "From CNet: District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper on Friday overturned a late April ruling that required the maker of ReplayTV set-top box technology to write and install software to monitor what its customers were watching."

Comments

Two stories on PVRs

[stoney27]

Not so much on the Judges ruling but this week on the show "On The Media" had two stories about TiVo and a follow up on product placement because of TiVo.

http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_06010 2_ tivo.html

Which talkes about TiVo, and then in intresting fact, it seems that someone was reporting that the BBC had down loaded a show or two to all TiVo machines that could not be deleted, had to wait one week before it was removed. Thus hoping I guess for people to watch it. ( Could be full of add :)

And http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_060102_ product.html
another story:

On what the advertisers are doing to get their products in front of people's eyes.

-Scott

A battle won, but the war's not over

[jbarr]

This is a great victory for more than just Sonic Blue. This sets a precident that prevents manufacturers from being required to install monitoring software. That said, the issues of file sharing and commercial skipping are still open (for which litigation is no doubt forthcoming!)

By the way, the whole "file sharing" issue has often been misinterpreted. ReplayTV's file sharing is not an unlimited sharing tool like Napster was. You can only share a file with up to 15 other people, and once the recipient receive the file, they cannot share it further. Yes, itis file sharing, but it's been designed to be somewhat limited.