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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."
There are plenty of free choices now, and they are geting better every day, seems like a bad time for Tivo to start upsetting their biggest fans.
If they are allowing other sites to sell their images for a profit, presumably they are getting royalties, and would therefore want to encourage the growth of this market by stopping people doing it for free. Follow the money...
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
What, you mean like this source code?
Anyhow, I don't see how distribution of images is related to the GPL. The GPL doesn't require that TiVo provide binary versions of its software. Furthermore, just because TiVos are Linux-based, who says all of the software on a TiVo box is GPL'd? Surely they have their own proprietary programs on there that don't use GPL'd code, and those programs would not allowed to be distributed in TiVo disk images.
Tivo's operating system is copyright 1991-2003 Linus Torvalds, FSF and others. Anyone distributing it requires a letter of permission from the copyright holders. The GPL just happens to give the necessary permission if and only if certain conditions are met.
So who exactly has done anything here that they shouldn't?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
How is this different to somebody hosting Windows ISOs? If there is software that is copyrighted by Tivo inside the images and they haven't given the people distributing them license to do so, then they are well within their rights to stop the distribution.
TiVo themselves have already posted their kernel modifications on the web site. They're Good Guys, usually. They have no obligation to let the rest of their code be tossed around the internet.
I suspect their concern is that someone will figure out how to hack their way into their servers or steal DirecTV service or eventually manage to run the whole image on "stock" hardware.
Much better for them to nip this copyright violation now than to try to stop it in a year or two when they'll annoy even more people. It may be harder for people to fix "hacked" TiVo's, but you take your own chances when you break that warranty seal...
The problem I see with MythTV and Freevo right now is that they don't seem to have any concept of CABLE BOXES! Many people out there have digital cable and need to be able to control a cable box. Can these packages handle that? From what I've seen (at first glance) is that they are tuner based and don't allow serial or IR control of a cable box...or do they?
So Tivo MAY want to prevent folks from moron-izing their systems, but not have a problem with folks that don't have a history of doing so.
If you fudge up your system with bad software, you're out of warranty. Buy a new system. Sale! So that's not the motivation..
If you don't have access to software, there's no way to upgrade, say the harddrive, without springing for a newer model. Sale!
So, apparantly it's come to the point that more people are succesfully upgrading their kit than people who're moron-izing their systems.
Or they may be required by licenses with third parties (e.g. patent licenses for MPEG) to go after people who redistribute their software, so as to avoid paying extra costs to those third parties. In that case you'd expect them to send C&Ds, and pretty much let you off the hook once you've gone underground. This seems to be the case so far.
It's probably also the reason the commercial upgrade-kit sellers don't get in trouble; I'd assume they pay their tithe (both to TiVo (hey, why not take a slice of the cake?) and their upstream licensors).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Is it really an alternative? I don't mean that lightly, i mean is freevo really just as good as tivo in every single way so as to make it a prefectly viable alternative?
Or is this is a case of it'll work reasonably well, some things it'll do that Tivo can't, something won't work as well, the interface won't be quite so polished, it won't do everything you'd hope it did, it's got a few quirks here and there and above all the hardware actually costs more to purchase before you even start thinking about messing around trying to get it installed.
Or will it save you hours of pain if you just cough up the money and get something that works as soon as you plug it in?
Yes, I know there is KnoppixMyth, but can you really set that up and give it to your parents? Looking at the technical specifications for one record and one playback (1.4 GHz CPU and 384 megabytes of RAM) thats quite pricey and you haven't even considered the fact it'll be a huge box and you need a DVD drive, controller, HD and some serious soundproofing.
Not something that you can sit under the TV!
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Interesting. I would think that someone who doesn't have the time/skills/desire to put something together and only wants somethig that works out of the box would be the spoiled one...
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
DirecTivos don't do their software updates over the phone, they get them from the satellite, then dialup to verify that the machine is active, then run the patches. I can't be 100% sure, but the standalones and the DirecTivos are completely different, so there's no way to just magically make HMO (Home Media Options) work.
Not yet they don't.
DirecTivo's still get their software updates over the phone line. The capability exists to do software patching via the satellite, but to my knowledge (admittedly limited on this point), they have not used it yet.
And the "magic" way to make HMO work on Series 2 D-Tivo's is indeed to copy a Series 2 standalone image with activated HMO to the unit. This was discovered a few months ago. Tivo unified their code base with the series 2 systems a while back, and one side effect of this was that the code became unified enough to where the standalone image was in fact "close enough" to work more or less correctly on a D-Tivo. Doing this and letting it then dial in would be an exceedingly stupid thing to do, but no doubt some morons did it anyway.
This highlights a bit of a problem with Tivo's latest offerings, one that I bitched about on the Tivo Community forums back when I was still welcome there. They are charging, on a monthly basis, for what is essentially a one time software update. Every feature of the HMO (Home Media Option) stuff, with the exception of web access to your Tivo, is done by the unit itself and requires no external connection as such. The MP3 playing, show sharing, picture viewing, all of that doesn't need the unit to call home to be able to do any of it. So it was really only a matter of time before someone flipped their own switches on the box, I argued. The unification of the code base between D-Tivo's and Standalones let people figure out how to flip their own switches on the D-Tivo's as well. Take an HMO activated standalone, copy it to the D-Tivo, voila.
Tivo is headed down the drain, IMO. They made a very good product, and changed the landscape of TV viewing. But they've made some very poor decisions with regards to their business strategies and software designs, and now it's starting to bite them in the ass.
I'm starting to feel like it's only a matter of time before it's full on war between Tivo hackers and Tivo Inc., and Tivo Inc. doesn't stand a chance on this one. The majority of Tivo sales have classically been via word of mouth, and if they don't turn it around, they're going to alienate their best and most vocal sellers, ya know?
- 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.
Oh, come on. To use one of these images you have to:
a. Open up the Tivo - Torx Drivers required.
b. Play with the IDE cables, IDE jumpers and other crap.
c. Run Linux, or use a Linux Boot disk.
No one who does that even remotely thinks that calling CS is going to help.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Boy, you sure can read between the lines.. Badly, I might add.
business model is based on extorting a monthly fee for a VCR
With the standalones, it's not all that unexpected.. The unit needs continuing guide data, Tivo provides that data. Value received for payment made. With the D-Tivo's you have a point, but the fee on the D-Tivo's is so low that it's not even worth thinking about it.
acting like a jackbooted thug and violating the GPL
Tivo isn't violating the GPL, in even the most restrictive sense you can possibly put the GPL. They're totally in the clear on this one.
you're saying that you're surprised
I'm surprised in that I'm not sure what this particular action gets them in terms of a gain. It's one thing if this was costing them subscriptions or sales, but it's not, as far as I can see. So I fail to understand why they took this course, because it gains them nothing of import.
- 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.
>well your reasoning sounds like total BS
Its not reasoning its fact. I have a melted card to prove it. A replacement card didn't work.
Whether or not the card reader broke or something else is beyong me, but it seems like the most likely scenario.
> I suspect that under closer examination one would find that you were attaching an external circuit to your DTIVO.
I have no idea what you're talking about and accusing people of theft without any proof is about as close to moral bankrupt as one can get.
No "free alternative" can compete with an integrated unit with dual tuners and direct digital capture of the original DirecTV data streams combined with a mature GUI for (as of today) $99. Generic PC solutions will rarely beat a specialized device with embedded components dedicated to a single function.
The fanatics will cry about the monthly fee because, as far as I can tell, they place zero value on their time. Honestly, I sometimes get an image of these guys stuffing their uncashed paychecks into their mattresses while in the other room they are trying to reinvent the wheel.
--- Ban humanity.
If skipping commercials was a problem, then advertisers would have been bitching since the dawn of the VCR. Tivo doesn't make it any easier to fast forward through a commercial.
All advertisers need to do is make their commercials interesting and relevant. I hardly ever skip the commercials during Adult Swim because they're so fun to watch.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The "choices" are all shit. No, really. Compared to a Tivo, they are expensive *and* crap. Basically you need a PC to dedicate to the task, that alone is more expensive than a Tivo and then you need to fuck about with it for days to get it half as functional as a lobotomised Tivo.
The software in the Tivo images contains Tivo's code. Taking that code and distributing it without permission is very simply and plainly copyright infringement. You just shouldn't do it. By all means take a backup, but the code is not yours to give away.
Tivo do comply with the GPL, (http://www.tivo.com/linux/) so if you want the GPL'd code, go get it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Not true, users of open source (whether out of the box or homebrew setup) are definately the spoiled ones ;)
Why on earth would anybody want to waste their time trying to get a proprietary anything to work the way they want just to discover it doesn't it isn't flexible enough and "settle" for what it can do?
Even if I have to tinker with it, 9999 of 10000 times I can be confident that there IS a way to accomplish what I'd like to do with open source and thus I never settle.
The sort of rhetoric by those using words like "extortion" and "jackboots" only serve to discredit open source in the eyes of legitimate business.
I don't know where you got your information, but I don't believe it. I've never had a problem finding a DirecTiVo for purchase, and from what I've read, DirecTV is actually getting very close to releasing a high-definition DirecTiVo unit.
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