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

Music to my ears...

[NanoGator]

"If the networks and studios focused on the inevitable evolution of their business instead of attempts to stifle technology, we believe everyone involved would benefit, consumers most of all," the CEO added. "

I'm starting to hear this more and more. I hope that this was an influence in the judge's decision. The simple fact of the matter is that markets change. You can't legally force them to stay put. Doing so will ruin this economy. There is a lot more at stake here than just ad revenue.

Consequences of these devices

[Space Coyote]

The current slump in ad revenues combined with the spectre of TV watchers being able to skip ad has caused some TV show producers to write ads into the actual contents of the show. There was a story on CNN about this yesterday, in which they showed a scene from "Felicity" with dialog as follows "Hey, I just got a new computer" "Oh, is it one of those new iMacs? Those things are so beautiful".

Another example is on the Rosie O'Donnel show she recently shilled for Wendy's new salads, saying how great they were. I wasn't watching, but apparently while she was talking her producer said "Take a bite", "What?" "Just do it."

Another good example is the TV morning "news" shows on the day Coke launched Vanilla Coke. The Daily Show did a wonderful send up of this. "The Today show host then informed the Coco-Cola spokeswoman that it was time to go to a commercial break, at which point she just allowed her to continue speaking."

I can picture this getting a whole lot worse, as it's the enw hot trent in advertising. I've basically stopped watching TV altogether except for the Simpsons anyway.