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TiVo Goes After Sites Hosting Image Backups
TiVo User writes "TiVo has apparently decided to come down on sites that hosted 'image backups,' essentially tarballs of the OS for the machine, which just happens to be Linux. TiVo owners use the images to install on new, larger hard drives (increasing the recording capacity of the unit) or to recover a dead system. Why TiVo has a problem with this, but allows others to sell the same images for profit is beyond me." Read on for the rest of TiVo User's comments.
"The images are not used to create pirate TiVos (as a subscription service, TiVo justifiably controls access to their database tightly), so there wouldn't appear to be much harm in allowing them to be hosted. TiVo has always walked a fine line in allowing the user community to mod their units, perhaps they have finally stepped over that line, considering there are free alternatives that are less restrictive. To their credit, the legal mumbo jumbo in their cease letter is non-threatening compared to most other of this type, but it's interesting the letter draws no distinction between the portions of the software that are Linux, and therefore expressly distributable, and those that are proprietary to TiVo."
If the code that does all the work is in userland then all they are required to do is allow people to get at the kernel source, they don't have to release anything that runs on top of the kernel as a normal process.
But if they've added drivers for TiVo specific hardware (don't know if there is any, don't have a TiVo) then it's down to the old binary modules argument, and if they've modified the kernel in any way then they need to release those modifications.
Opening the box, extracting the images, installing the images... all illegal under the DMCA.
Is it fair? No.
But it's the law -- an asinine and relatively untested law -- but the law nevertheless.
Get used to it. Your property is no longer your property. You merely own the license for its use.
No. They are required to supply the source to all the GPLed software that they are distributing, and any of their own software which is linked against GPLed software (which is also therefore GPL). However, they are not required to allow people to view/distribute any proprietary code which doesn't fall into these categories. Since the OS images contain both GPLed and proprietary software, they are within their rights to prevent distribution. They are however required to provided the source of the GPLed stuff on the image seperately, on request, but this is probably not very interesting anyway
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Why not read the Hardware Sections of some of the projects?
A GHz processor should do timeshifting - Freevo lists 400MHz as minimum for operation (not including simultaneous enc/dec for timeshifting), and I seem to recall 1GHz being bandied about as recommended for that.
Games Workshop Petition
If you purchase a card that can do hardware encoding/decoding (a Hauppage WinTV PVR 250 or 350, for example), that is well-supported under Linux, the rest of the system won't have to be too powerful, and a MiniITX board would work brilliantly. However, if you want to encode things in software (to XViD, for instance), you might need a meatier processor, as a VIA processor might choke.
Some useful links:
MythTV requirements
And for Freevo
PVR Database
Hope that helps.
I don't know why you would link directly to sourceforge project page for Freevo when they have a much nicer homepage, including screenshots, at http://freevo.sourceforge.net/
For those GPL whiners. It took a whole 30 seconds to find this:
http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html
The email from TiVo itself:
Your website (ftp.abs.net) has recently come to our attention. We appreciate your enthusiasm for the TiVo(R) DVR and we have some specific requests regarding your website.
We request that you cease hosting backup images of TiVo's proprietary software. The software represents valuable intellectual property of TiVo's, and making it available for copying and distribution is a violation of TiVo's copyrights. Such use is without our consent and is illegal under US federal copyright law. In particular, we are requesting that all of the files and directories located at ftp://ftp.abs.net/tivo/Backups/ be removed.
If they are correct in their statements, then this does indeed suggest that there is some proprietary code in addition to the GPL'd kernel in there. I suppose the best thing to do here is verify what can be distributed (under the GPL) and what can't, from the TiVo package.. (But I don't own a TiVo, so that may not be possible)
I have sent back 3 TiVo's...
Try this -- you need a standard computer, and a couple of TV cards.
I remember way back in the day, when Tivo hacking was overly encouraged by the company, the president of Tivo posted on the boards pissed off that people were imaging. Evidently, several people had imaged a Philips image on a Sony system or vice-versa, and it was screwing up the company's update system. That may be why they're cracking down on the sites.
Then I come here and read stuff like "Since they use linux, they're required to send an engineer over to my house to explain how their data structures work." Great! Some microsoft exec is already planning a happy hour for their marketing group. Maybe you'll get invited.
Because not everyone is getting software from the Internet. When the GPL was written, the Internet as we know it today didn't even exist.
The clause still makes sense in the Internet world though. Suppose I include a link to a third party site to get GPL code I distribute. They go out of business or change their domain name, or even take down the version I used because it became obselete. I'm now in violation of the GPL.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You obviously aren't a true geek...
The true geeks custom-built their recording system from pieced together shell-scripts, perl code, and a little C. And carefully control every step of the process, to get the absolute highest performance from their setup.
ReplayTV, with it's inability to crop off black borders, hence requiring MUCH higher bitrates, and it's regular tendency to drop frames, and no way to get around that, is not functional enough to be very useful at this point. I hope it improves, but I'm not holding my breath.
Those of us who put a little more work into it, can easily have a system with much higher quality, needing less CPU time, less disk space, less memory, and overall-getting much more functionality out of the system. But I guess I'm just ranting at this point. I hope the two projects quickly get to a point that they are good options, but they certainly aren't right now, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to integrate the most important features.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
and they do provide it. It's at http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html.
-- "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" -Optimus Prime
They aren't - the GPL doesn't specify how the code must be made available. They simply have to make the source available somehow, and are entitled to charge the cost of providing it.
The GPL DOES specify how the code must be made available, either by using a or b:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
I'm not familiar with TiVos in particular, but does anyone have any proof that they've made no derivative works from userland code or the Linux kernel without releasing source code to the modifications?
a) Tivo does distribute their kernel changes. See http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html . There's enough there to build a Tivo kernel with a lot of effort on the user's part. In the case of later Tivo's you can't build your own *working* kernel because you can't sign the code, but there's ways around that.
b) Most of their code runs in userland, not in the kernel. This includes the MFS filesystem stuffs, AFAIK.
- 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.
Someone figured out if you restored image from a standalone Series 2 to a HD for a DirecTivo, you could get the full range of Tivo Series 2 functionality (USB Networking, etc.). The 'second generation' DirecTivos do not have a number of features that the standalone Series 2 Tivos have (DirecTV has chosen not to enable them).
It also caused problems with DirecTV's over-the-phone software update, as every night the machine would attempt to get new software but fail after applying the patch, tying up lines for several hours.
their kernel modules are probably GPL
TiVo's filesystem is proprietary and closed source.
Kernel modules need to be GPL, although there are some grey areas that Linus acknowledges. It's unlikely that a new filsystem would have fallen into one of those grey areas.
So, TiVo solved the problem in a novel way. They hacked the NFS client code in the kernel so that instead of communicating with an NFS server over TCP/IP, it communicates with a local userland process. They released this code under the GPL.
Then they wrote the filesystem code to run in userland, and kept that closed source, as is their right.
That's more or less exactly how these images were made. Early on, images were made using dd. Nowadays, people make images using a special program called "mfstool" which is capable of backing only the necessary parts of the Tivo drive, reducing the size of the created image. So all the sites recommend making your *own* image. But sites like abs.net existed as a just in case type of mechanism. If your system failed, and you never made a backup, here was a solution.
It was well known (or should have been) that distributing these was illegal, and this was in fact why I didn't allow posting links to these sites on the Tivo Community forums, back when I was running the Underground forum there. But they were well known nonetheless, and I myself sent links to abs.net to users in need.
Tivo is well within their rights to not have these images distributed, but it's a pretty sad thing that they now feel the need to exert those rights. I guess it's finally happened and Tivo is no longer "hacker" friendly. Oh well. It was a joyous time while it lasted, I guess.
- 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 suspect their concern is that someone will figure out how to hack their way into their servers
Already done, but easily detected on their end, more or less.
or steal DirecTV service
Also already done, and not easily detectable either. But it's no easier than stealing DTV on any other DTV box.
or eventually manage to run the whole image on "stock" hardware.
Not bloody likely, and considering that this particular site has been in operation *at least* three years to my explicit knowledge, nobody is really interested.
I know a lot about Tivo and the hacking community and such, and I'm at a loss to satisfactorily explain why Tivo would do this. I suspect a Tivo lawyer found out about it. Most of the Tivo engineering people have no real issue with this sort of thing.
Tivo is well within their rights here, but to my absolute and certain knowledge, several key people at Tivo have known about ftp.abs.net for at least 2 years. I'm just not sure why this is happening now.
- 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.
What do you mean by "recognized"? It is a license, which is essentially a contract. IANAL, but I do know that all licenses/contracts that do not explicitly violate laws and are by definition legal, hence "recognized" by law.
Now it hasn't been tested in court. It's possible that it violates some provision of contract law, which differ by country, but I've never heard anybody ever suggest any violation of law in the GPL, other than SCO's hallucinogenic diatribe about it being unconsititution, which doesn't pass the laugh test.
But AFAIK, my licenses to use just about any software on my computer (MS Windows, Office, Matlab, CorelDraw, etc.) have not been tested in court either. That doesn't make them "pipedreams". There really is no such thing as "recognized by law", only valid or invalid licenses & contracts, and you need an explicit violation to be invalid.
But if they've added drivers for TiVo specific hardware (don't know if there is any, don't have a TiVo) then it's down to the old binary modules argument, and if they've modified the kernel in any way then they need to release those modifications.
There is and they have. http://www.tivo.com/linux
The objection to distribution of images is that image necessarily contain their proprietary userland code, which is decidely not GPL.
- 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.
If I remember correctly from my Business Law courses, it doesn't matter if the warranty has expired. They never fixed the problem satisfactorily and therefore are still legally obligated to send you a working product.
Now once you have a working TiVo, they may be able to say to hell with you, but until then they are still bound by the original warranty, no matter how much time has passed.
I hope you are not right. I have both a Tivo and a Dish Network PVR. The Dish Network PVR is a complete piece of crap. It frequently locks up, randomly reboots, etc. It has none of the season pass features that makes the Tivo so great. It doesn't even let you give labels to your "manual timers". It is a big, glorified VCR that crashes more often.
Not only that, it doesn't record shows sometimes. A had a period of time where every show was recorded for only 1 second. I had to delete and re-create all of my manual timers.
And for a perspective from the other side of hardware reliability; I've owned a DirecTivo unit for going on 3 years and I haven't experienced any reliability problems with my unit at all. And believe me, it gets a workout! ;)
G
Also, a simple google groups search shows you that the Hughes fans are notorious for failing.
See also: My usenet post regarding Hughes fans from 2002.
Facts beat conspiracy theories any day of the week.
Unfortunately for the free PVR software packages, there is no free guide data. xmltv can be (and is widely) used, but it typically grabs data by scraping from zap2it, where there the TOS explicitly forbids this ("you may not modify, copy, frame, cache, reproduce, sell, publish, transmit, display or otherwise use any portion of the Content"). If Freevo or MythTV got large enough to show up on Tribune Media Services' (the owner of zap2it) radar, they'd be squashed like bugs.
Too bad no one offers a subscription-based xmltv feed.
Because they're in the midst of releasing updates to the OS to work with Apple's AAC format with Home Media Option. I bet there's some code that Apple doesn't want to share (I don't blame them). Apple probably told them to stop allowing image downloads if they're going to get on the AAC front.
Just my $0.02.
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
From some of the posts online, you'd think some people have no idea how the law works and/or how a Tivo works.
Tivos) The images for series1 and series 2 tivos are essentially the same, allowing for differences in the hardware. The capabilities each Tivo has is dependant on what they are "allowed" for. Ie, home media option and such is enabled when the Tivo connects to the server and determines that it should be enabled.
Along that note, the things which a downloader of a Tivo image would be potentially "stealing":
The GPL states that if you modify the kernel itself and distribute it, you will need to distribute the modified source code as well. Tivo HAS done this. They have placed the GPL related portions along with their own direct modifications to the kernel for download on their web site.
Kernel modules and other object linked source code is still being hotly debated, for better or for worse. The stance most companies take is to distribute binary modules.
The application which runs on top of Linux, however, is NOT gpl'd. Nor are all of the other control mechanisms which Tivo has written. Nor are the images and other creative works put into the Tivo system.
By offering an image of the drive for download, that Tivo user is offering both GPL'd(which is ok) and Copyrighted(which is not okay) works. And since just backing up the GPL portions of the Tivo system will not restore the system, the image that user is offering is in violation of Copyright laws and Tivo has the right to and needs to tell them to stop.
Just because you use a GPL base for an OS does NOT make your application GPL as well. Graphical libraries are another matter and hence the LGPL, the BSD license, and a few others.
People need to understand that it isn't about being against GPL. It is about protected the portion which ISN'T GPL. And people aren't seeing that distinction when they should.
I've been a user of a Series2 Tivo for 2 years now and love it. One of the first appliances I bought when I moved into my current place. I upgraded mine and have had no problems with it. Though I'm thinking I'll be doing some routine maintenance myself to make sure the drives are okay, but otherwise, I have no complaints about image quality or any other problem with the system. (Except maybe the USB1.1 port which limits me to 11mbps when I really want 100mbps... :)
Tivo has been a great company and has always been courteous when I had problems or questions of them. They see something wrong happening and they are doing what needs to be done to rectify the problem.
They should not be dinged when they try to protect something legitimately, unlike another company which comes to mind.
Winged Power Photography