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TiVo, ReplayTV Agree to Limits
Grump writes "This story reports that 'The makers of TiVo and ReplayTV digital video recorders have agreed to limit how long consumers can keep pay-for-view movies stored on future versions of the VCR-like devices.' Is this fair, or erosion of more fair-use rights?"
As I recall in the recent past, a well-known seller tried to limit viewing of movies by introducing the Divx technology whereby, the machine would connect to a server to get a key to view. Now if Replay or Tivo try this then there will be a backlash from the consumer. What would be ironic is if one of these PVR manufactures goes bully up than I suspect that the software community will pickup the fragments and produce code to do whatever the original community want.
On a side note, I watch a video program on my PVR from PBS that was for educational instructional use and it had a disclaimer at the beginning stating that copies could be used up until 2006 or so. I don't have any intent on keeping the program that long but why should I depend on a 3 party source to keep and maintain material. A distributed system where PVR owners share programs is just about to become a rally by certain. This peeves me - the thing that manufactures/groups worry about the most is usually good for them and the consumer.
To sum the two paragraphs together: the video material should be in an inter-dispersed local (PVRs) and not limited because of popularity (Fair use). In fact the material should only survive if it is popular enough to be wanted/distributed from enough people wanting to exchange the information - If no one wants it then it would disappear.
These two competitors have agreed on a completely arbitrary limit for recording PPV shows. Why? Think about it: the PVR market is growing. Rather than focusing on new features for the consumer (ie: "We offer 1.5 times the PPV time-limit over our competitor.") they've come to an agreement that is good for no one but themselves. There's no way in hell that they just decided to do this, the entire agreement has the fetid stink of collusion.
Take control, this is yet another reason to dump TV entirely and download what you want to watch.
Sorry, it's Friday, I'm in RantMode and I have First Damn Post.
Trolling is a art,
And how long before someone breaks whatever method they use to perform the restriction?
My bet is less than a month after they're first made available to the public.
This space intentionally left blank.
Enjoy!
DVD Ripping, Divx, VCD, SVCD under Linux
That's crap!
Not that the story is wrong, but the idea is bullshit.
I have a TiVo and I upgraded it with a 140Gb drive, so I get over 100hrs of storage. I use it in exactly the way they should want someone to. I'm not a couch potato, I work for a living. There are shows I like to watch, but I usually don't have time to just sit down at watch when they're on. I usually start watching television around 2am. For years, this meant I watched crap. Now that I have a TiVo, I can watch good shows.
We'll use their example of '6 feet under'. I may not get a chance to watch it til a week later. Should I miss the episode because they decided to set an arbitrary limit to how long I can keep it stored? What if I'm out of town for work for a week? Can't I come home, and catch up on the episodes that I missed. Yes, this has happened more than once, and it's *REALLY* nice that I can do it.
I haven't seen any black market shops selling '6 feet under' episodes recorded with TiVo.
How about PPV movies? My girlfriend has watched movies, and recorded them (on the TiVo). I may sit down a week or two later, and watch that movie. Fair use. The household paid for it. Or more like, *I* paid for it. If we had been home at the same time, we would have watched together. So if this goes through, now she'll see the movie or show, and I'll be out of luck?
They're not afraid of piracy, they're looking at possible revenue that they're missing. They could possibly get an extra PPV viewing fee because I would possibly buy it twice. Well, that's wrong, I wouldn't. I won't pay twice, I just won't watch it til it comes out on HBO and I happen to be sitting there.
As for '6 feet under', I actually was into that show in the first few seasons. I didn't have a TiVo, but my schedule permitted me to be at home to watch it. At the time, I didn't own a TiVo. My work schedule changed, and I missed several episodes, and was lost about the story line when I tried to start watching again. If I had a TiVo then, I could have spent some time catching up on old episodes, and still been interested in the series. Now that's a show I simply don't watch. It's a waste of their broadcasting time, because I don't know what's happened previously.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
So I guess I better keep that VHS a little longer... feh....
MythTV as a better solutions.
You can use teh DVD Rip feature to store all of your DVD's to your MythBoxen's HDD.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." Linus Torvalds
I guess its time to go back to what I did before Tivo--record onto a VHS tape to watch whenever I wanted, and delete if I didn't want it anymore.
Is this fair, or erosion of more fair-use rights?
Sounds more like collusion to me.
That's fine. I'll just start storing them on my hard drive. That, or I'll quit ordering Pay-Per-view altogether and just sign up for Netflix so I can burn DVD-R copies like everyone else.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Right away I want to cry out that this is BS.
But on the other hand, I never order pay per view. In the extremely rare occasion that I do rent a movie (probably been about 4-5 years now since I have done it, come to think of it) I would rather go out and grab a DVD to watch it in progressive scan. That, and see any extras that are on the disc.
SCrew it. I'll keep recording shows and streaming them to my PC.
First, can you still pull that content off your Tivo/ReplayTV and put it on something else? Yes.
Second, is the time limit as long/longer than a rental? I tend to look at this service as a replacement for going to my neighborhood video rental store. Is the quality, price, rental time limit, etc. comparable? If so, and it removes the hassle of driving out to the store, plus finding a movie that's actually in stock, then it sounds like a great deal to me.
What fair use rights are being eroded when you rent a movie for the night and return it the next day?
Seems TiVo and RePlay should remain consistent with this potential span.
After all, I need something to pass down to my children!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Part of the agreement when you buy a PPV movie is that you have a limited window in which to watch it. You didn't buy the right to watch it whenever you want, do why do you demand it anyway? If you don't want to watch it right then, don't buy it right then. This is akin to renting a movie from Blockbuster, returning it 3 weeks late and then demanding no late fees because you didn't watch it until the night before.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I haven't seen a single advantage to PPV. The movies that I see available on DirecTV have already been out in the movie store for over a month (ie Starsky and Hutch). I pay less at the video store and I get to keep the movie for 5 days...
So what advantage does a $4.00 movie via PPV (plus additional fees that they might charge) have?
Let me know when I can purchase DVDs over my Tivo and have a tangible piece of media to store it for life that doesn't take up my TV recording space and I'll be interested. Until then it's just another Divx knockoff that's going to die because no one cares.
Their argument for this is bogus. If they think pay-per-view is cutting into the videotape rentals that they so bitterly opposed (you should check out the problems blockbuster had when they first started up), then they should charge more for pay-per-view. It seems like everytime a technological advance comes along, the MPAA has to be dragged kicking and screaming....into a big pile of money. I wish they would stop their whining.
If they really want to get serious about this, it's obvious that they should be working on limiting how long people are allowed to remember the intellectual property they've consumed, much less how long they are allowed to keep it available.
I know that if I were still in the driver's seat, I would be ordering up plans on how to reliably blank the memories of the stinking mass of sheeple that suck the generous teat of mass media. Not only would it allow us to sell the same thing over and over, none of you bastards would even remember enough to care about 'fair use' and all that malarky. sheesh.
signed,
Ted Turner
It's perfectly fair. I just won't buy from them.
Feel free to continue to practice your Fair Use Rights by using DVArchive (or whatever equivalents are out for TiVo. Or buy some OTHER company's PVR. Or find out how to hack the feature back into the units. Or build a homebrew PVR using Freevo, Myth, Sage, etc.
Consumers still have a ton of options. This is just two corporations making a dumb decision--nothing to see!
I can't see this argument working well with the current crop of TiVo subscribers, who are used to retaining content for as long as they'd like. With the current TiVo boxes, you can even record off DVD (i.e. rentals) to your TiVo, and watch them as much as you'd like, since the recorder recognizes the Macrovision on the way in, and re-establishes it on output (so you couldn't make a VHS dub of the recorded DVD). I know of quite a few TiVo users that do this, and I can't see them liking losing this functionality. I know I'd be unhappy with this restriction, losing the content in as little as 24 hours.
Are they going to require current users to upgrade their box if they want to keep using the service? I see no mention of it in the article.
If not, I think I'll go out and buy a Tivo this weekend.
No sig for you!!
And if you don't like/can't use Myth try out Sage... Sage.TV
I've only ever paid for one pay-per-view program. That was the Rolling Rock Town Fair from a few years ago because I was there. I paid for it. I taped it (yeah, what a lamer). And I plan on keeping it.
Why does someone else have a right to put a limit on how long I can keep a record of part of my life experience.
Just some food for thought...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Instead of, say, limiting the length of time it can be stored, why don't they make it so that (1) once play has started, it must be completed within 48 hours, and (2) once it's finished playing, the file erases itself.
Let the TiVo store unplayed content for an infinite length of time -- but put strict limits on it once it starts to be *used(
It seems that tivo should be doing things to keep customers rather than drive them away. I view Tivo in a similar way as I view AOL's demise. It was a good idea at the start, but in the face of better cheaper technology proved to be an untenable business arangement... at least at the prices they are trying to charge. My friends cable company is about to install a dvr in place of their cable box as apart of their survice package (not sure if they're paying extra, although I don't think they are). This is most likely the future of this kind of service.
There is always some words to the effect you are agreeing to something that will either be sent to you on request or available in some way when you use Pay per view. Whether or not you chose to read it, or whether or not it's entirely enforceable is someone else's call. When they bill you, you are paying for a service, and that service has an agreement associated with it, somewhere.
Never confuse volume with power.
Isn't this anti-competitive collusion? Sounds to me like they're both ripe for being sued under various states consumer protection laws.
Shit like this is precisely why I'm building myself a mythtv box. Better quality, unlimited space, no monthly fees, easy networking, easy CD/DVD burning, etc.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
it is intended to allay the piracy and business concerns that prevent the studios from releasing films to cable pay-per-view services on the same day they appear on DVD. Such issues also have made premium cable networks reluctant to offer on-demand services that would allow subscribers to watch any episode of, say, ``Six Feet Under'' they choose, at any time.
What piracy concerns? DVDs are available for download the second they hit store shelves (or days before as is often the case). Having some movie on a Tivo isn't going to increase the level of piracy.
"Business concerns" my ass.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Its their content. Its their business how they license that content to you.
Although it pisses me off as much as anyone else on here that these content companies want "do not record", "only play until xxx", and "do not copy" type flags on their content, I do believe they've got every right to do that since the material belongs to them.
If you don't like it, don't watch it. There's lots of far higher quality movies, programs and music out there from people who aren't as fixated on keeping strict controls.
If the majority of people care, then they will change or go out of business. But the fact is, most people don't care. They're still going to watch "6 Feet Under"...
It seems to me that the PVR manufs are trying to make more content available, not restrict us on content they already get for us. By having a policy on the table, they can offer the PPV providers more customers and offer PVR users access to movies as soon as they are available on DVD, rather than months later.
This could be a win for us PVR users. This could only be a loss for us PVR users if the PVR providers were somehow forced (forced I say) to implement these new restrictions on content we already get.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
do the same thing as these technologies with a computer and software? For the techie is this a non-issue or am I missing something about what they offer? If a company starts creating limits on what you can do for no reason other than for their own selfish interest, perhaps it is time to move on.
It's for TV on demand. If you're going out of town, don't order it until you get back. It's not going to stop you from tivo'ing the entire season of 6 Feet Under during the year, it'll just stop you from order a high def ppv copy of an episode you missed if you are dumb enough to order it, then never watch it.
Never confuse volume with power.
There are certain stations that I get *cough*PlayboyTV*cough* that are categorized as Pay Per View, and I get a warning every time I tell my Tivo to record that I need to make sure to order this PPV show through my cable company. Well, guess what? I SUBSCRIBE. I can watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week (and sometimes, I DO!). The point is, when I record something, I want it to STAY. And REPEAT. And REPEAT. And just repeat the last eight seconds again. Keep going.
Why is my vision getting blurry?
"How to permanently keep your recorded data"
mythtv-suite
And this is on the precompiled binaries page! How the heck will any non-Linux-geek figure this out?
Someone really needs to compile a MythTV LiveCD (or whatever) that you can just install and run on a PC with suitable video hardware. Having to figure out all this Linux mumbo-jumbo, or worse, compile it yourself, is a recipe for saying "screw it" and going back to TiVo, restrictions or no.
sulli
RTFJ.
We're not losing any rights at all!
It's the right of the studios to release their movies how and when they want by whatever means they want. It's the right of Tivo to, within the confines of the law, put whatever bloody restriction enforcement they want inside their products. The right we have here is to buy or not buy, that's about it.
We have the right to simply not buy a DVR that enforces such restrictions, or not rent movies that are encumbered by such restrictions. Of course, they're trying to craft laws to change that, but that's an entirely different story.
I think perhaps television companies are failing to see the true positives and negatives of these systems. Their true problem is not that people will turn their TIVO into a movie library (hence filling it to the point where they won't have any more space), but that they will skip commercials. The most likely response to this, besides desperate legislation, is to build more and more advertising into the shows themselves. Whether this is a good or bad scenerio, I don't know. It means less time wasted with commercials, but content becoming much more controlled.
The positives of these systems is there is no longer a 'prime time'. Once these systems are wide spread, you can schedule shows at any time, including the middle of the night, and people who want to watch them can.
As for Tivo and Replays "solution" here, well, not being able to keep pay-per-view stuff forever isn't so bad, though I'll stick with my MythTV box which I have total control over. The bad part of this is that this isn't likely to be the only restriction but the start of many restrictions which will further erode the usefulness of these systems, and even worse, the coming of new laws that would likely have made systems like Tivo illegal in the first place if they came a little earlier.
Remember, the the original Sony Betamax decision at the Supreme Court didn't say that we were allowed to use VCRs to permanantly archive anything. It said that we had the right to time-shift content we obtained from TV broadcasters.
Therefore, a TiVo really doesn't have the legally established right to have a "Save Until I Delete" feature. Current TiVo devices offer that "green ball" as a keep-forever setting, but that's really in the gray area that we've never seen any court rulings about how legal that is.
So, another chip off the "fair use" tree has fallen away from us, but this wasn't really one that was well established to begin with. At least this is also a dent in the "broadcast flag" that might have marked PPV movies as being in a no-DVR-zone...
Say the limit were 75 years or something similar to my lifetime. I'd be all for that. I doubt that they are thinking this long term.
Hollywood's view on copyright is pretty unrealistic in my opinion.
When a film is released in cinemas, a large degree of copyright control can be expected by the copyright owner. They can effectivly control the distrobution and showing of the film.
When the film is released on video and DVD, a large degree of copyright control is lost to the holder. They can only loosly control the distrobution and showing of the film. People can buy films and view them whereever they please, and give the DVD to whoever they please. Maybe even copy.
However when a copyright holder makes the decision to broadcast a film to millions of people, over the airwaves, potentially to every human in the contry, and in future perhaps the world, it is fair to say they have abandoned all pretence to copyright control. They have in effect duplicated the film about as many times as it can be duplicated, almost infinitly, and in so doing have made a laughing stock of their grounds of complete control over their copyright.
If you want to use your copyright to broadcast your film all over the airwaves, fine. Just don't expect to keep the same control over it as you did the day before. If you blast your movie into my box, I've got it and possession is nine tenths of the law mate.
It's like an author emailing his book to every inbox on the globe and then complaining when people start printing it out or reading it on their PDAs. Rubbish.
Hollywood has lost its monopoly on the reproduction of media content. Tought luck. Evolve or die, dinasaurs. Don't drag more innovative compnaies like TiVo down with you. the situation in the UK is a little different. Sky+ actually encourages viewers to record TV content. Maybe it's the lack of a Hollywood there?
May the Maths Be with you!
If you purchase a movie ticket for tonight and hold it until next week, would you expect to be allowed to view it later? No, in fact under most circumstances, you wouldn't even be entitled to a refund if you missed the showing. The problem is that the Studios don't view it as "you paid for it" giving you unlimited viewing rights. No, they view it as "you paid for the ability (access) to view it within their viewing window." Just because you missed the "viewing window" is not their problem. They provided the content that you paid for, but if you couldn't watch it on their terms (to which you agree), then you're out of luck.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Guys, if its pay per view, wouldn't it stay on your Tivo until you VIEW it? and if you watch it again, you pay AGAIN? otherwise they need to think about calling it PAY-PER-LIMITED-TIME-PERIOD-WINDOW or more simply PPLTPW. Jeez...
This is completely false. This is not a sig.
The thing is, it will start with PPV.
Then, since it "works so well to prevent piracy" (with no numbers to back anything up) they will do it on HBO movies. Then, the'll allow Disney to expire everyone's copy of "Beauty and the Beast" sitting on their PVR's because they are going to re-release it again.
When you're dealing with a company like TiVO, you're pretty much fucked. They started out as a "This is a fucking awesome device, give me two!" company, but now they're a lot bigger, they have a lot of vested interest from the media companies, and they WILL bow down to them.
I predict that we'll just start to see more PVR's. TiVO and this other one will just be two of the many. There's really nothing stopping people from making these things. They'll have "Unrestricted PVR's" for sale.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
its time to invest in tivo/replaytv backup units then..
Seeing all the great features offered with todays recording devices, I wonder when our Cities Utilities catch up? Wouldn't it make sense for them to mandate when each person can take a shit? The time period a toilet may be occupied needs to be limited as well as the number of flushes per sitting. This would certainly make waste water management a lot more efficient and predictable.
Resisance is futile, the future is coming...
Somewhat related
http://www.savebetamax.org/
Very wrong.
The idea is to remove all the BAD memories while keeping some of the good ones. That means one Bob has watched he's sure not to remember any of that bad crap, instead he'll just remember the good moments, and he'll be sure to tell everyone else how awesome an experience it was.
Ahh heck. If we had the capability to ease memories, why not just PLANT memories in their heads instead?
For the average joe, they will simply be screwed.. At the mercy of the media giants.. they will choose what you see, when you see it, and how much they feel like bilking you today for it..
Glad i dont watch much in the way of tv or movies.. so personally i wont miss it.. but the principle is wrong, and should be fought against..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can only presume now that because of this "cave in" they'll start feeling yet more pressure from other companies to limit times for their content as well.
Stupid. This is going to limit our rights and features on one of the best devices known to man in this age of information and bad tv that I can watch anytime.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Previous court rulings have allowed for infinite, private use of recorded things like Pay-Per-View events/movies.
If you want it *THAT* bad, then go buy yourself a goddamned VCR/DVD-R and dump it to that. The ones who like to hack theirs, send it to PC and save it there or something.
Inspite of having mammoth HDs andsuch, do you *really* want a huge 2+ hour file recorded at hgh quality just sitting on it for a long period of time? Do you lug your TiVo over to friends' places to do a movie night?
Better yet, as someone else suggested, go out and pay thr $20 or so an buy the DVD so you get a better copy, the special features, and a copy you can use anywhere.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
That the courts have said we do have some fair use rights.. and i dont remember anything about 'time limits' in those proceedings.. ( the old Sony betamax cases )
Course that could be easily overturned with the funding the media has now, and laws enacted to remove the fair-use concept totally..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
'Sorry to be a contrarian to the "Intellectual Property Is An Oxymoron" crowd, but...
In this particular instance, I agree with what they're doing - you paid a certain price to watch a movie for a certain period of time. If you want to record it, go buy a copy and record a backup for your own personal use (TM).
Mark
Dish networks, to my surprise, does not limit how long you can keep recorded pay-per-view movies, even though they stand to benefit more directly from such a task than TiVo or ReplayTV.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
What about things that are out of copyright? What if I want to keep my recorded copy of "Wonderful Life" forever, and show it every year during the holidays? The equipment won't let me, even though it is clearly permissible? What if I want to keep that 30-second news bit where one of my relatives was interviewed? As only an excerpt of the program and for non-commercial use, won't that fall under fair use?
These companies shouldn't cave in to pressure to restrict the functionality of equipment in such a way that it will hinder completely legitimate uses.
Read the article. They're not limiting how many weeks/months/years you can keep Adult Swim - Episode 342, Princess Zelda Gets Naked . These regularions are explicitly targeted at PPV shows.
PPV television is the only rental outlet where the rentee has no ability to limit the time you have access to the media. Movie stores bill you per time period, places like Netflix bill you per month, services like MovieBeam cycle the movies on and off as they desire.
Only with PPV television does the renter determine how long they want to "rent" the show for. It's a technological loophole in the whole rental concept, and if the PVR companies can figure out a way to close it up, they should.
Besides, most PVRs have the ability to dump digital media to something else - tape, DVD-R, whatever. Just like you used to do, if you want to keep the show, move it off onto permanent storage.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
This seems to me like a terrible business decision made short-sighted people who haven't done the proper research into consumer habits... Restrictions like this may appear to increase copyright-holder's revenue, and perhaps even do so in the very short-term, but in the long-term these kinds of restrictions REDUCE the revenue they make.
...Is this really that complicated to understand? By relaxing the rules, they've convinced me to SPEND MORE MONEY.
Or, to say it another way, less restrictive copy controls actually INCREASE the amount of money made on a property, so long as the expense is primarily discretionary.
Remember, I can entertain myself in many other ways aside from TV/Movie -- and so the convienence factor is a primary purchasing decision. If the _perceived_ value of the purchase is low: because of price, annoying rules, etc -- then I will go and spend my money somewhere else.
PPV is a perfect example of this... Up until last year, I was _never_ interested in PPV: why spend as much money as a rental, and not be able to pause for the bathroom, get interrupted, whatever. I occasionally rented movies: but renting is a pain, I have to go to the store, then I have to remember to return it (which I often don't) etc. As a result, I only rented movies when I was ready to have "a movie night" --and as a result rented movies once a month or less: 2 movie rentals/month.
Last year, I got the DirecTivo. DirecTivo with PPV is great: Every once in a while I go onto the PPV lists and pick a few movies I might want to watch, the Tivo records them and they're waiting. I find that I watch a lot more good movies this way: since anytime I want to chill for an hour I can just pop on a good movie (or the end of one I was interrupted watching). Using PPV like this, I buy probably 5-6 movies a month.
What's the downside to the movie studios here? The average person does not watch even a purchased DVD more than once or twice -- does the movie industry really think I'm gonna keep it stored on my Tivo for 2 years and watch it so many times that I will stop buying other movies?
Oh well, I guess I'll just stop buying PPV when this happens -- just like Copy-Protected CDs and the various other inconvienent drm formats that i've ignored...
their share of the PVR market.
Hellooooo homebrew!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
In your world, you think ihat a company radiating entertainment through the air over hundreds of square miles, with the intention that people should watch it, should be able to dictate whether someone can watch it privately later, rather than immediately. But you think it's preposterous that a feudal English lord, who actually owned the land his peasants were on, should be able to dictate the working conditions? You have some twisted idea of "natural right" when it comes to copyright, but you acknowledge it falls apart when you look at property more generally. And in any event, leaders like Thomas Jefferson didn't put the copyright and patent clause in the constitution on account of natural rights, they put it in there for economic purposes, to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. So why the fuck do you think your twisted Fox News / Pat Buchanan school of thought should apply to me?
Thanks for putting people straight. I swear, most of the people who post don't have two brain cells to rub together. Either that, or their legal education comes from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.
This place is getting worse than fark.com.
Television sucks.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
if you can't defend your position, don't analogize it to something completely different.
I've seen some very clever posts on this board about the applications of TiVo and ReplayTV to change the industry, some things I didn't even think of before.
The problem is, however, is that the bigger the industry, the less change is appreciated.
For example, someone said that with TiVo, prime time will go away and you can schedule your show any time and it will get picked up by one of these recorders. The problem with that is that then there is no longer a need for the executives who run prime time. Their niche is threatened. Plus without prime time pricing, advertising rates fall for those hours.
And then, if you can fast forward past commercials, rates fall even faster.
If you can't control the distribution of a movie, there is rarely a need for all the producers and execs responsible for filming and funding movies. The artist makes it, and then distributes it via their chosen medium. The pictures are high budget so they have to make sure money flows in a specific direction. Much of that money has to flow into the pockets of those execs.
I keep wanting to point out about failures in capitalism, until I realize that this isn't capitalism! Capitalism requires competition and, like so many industries in the US involving media and services, there is so little competition to actually be capitalism. We just conveniently forgot about that chapter Adam Smith wrote about when it comes to media.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
the law is on your side.
In 2000, Realnetworks sucessfully sued Streambox under the DMCA to prevent the latter from distributing their product that circumvented (ignored) Real's copy control system.
Don't you think that the PPV folks must be envious of that result?
EFF (anti) Broadcast flag page
Join the Television Front of Digital Liberation!
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
it is collusion! normally collusion has to do with prices (and sometimes sales territory) rather than features such as this.
But think of this like an economist: reducing features and charging the same price is essentially the same thing as raising the price (go with me on this one). If two companies agree to limit functionality and maintain their prices (or agree to similar prices, or even simply agree on price) then that really is price collusion.
Think about this: Ford and GM executives at one point never even spoke to each other for fear of collusion accusations!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Lost Sheep to Shepard, you got your ears on?
That these latest string of announcements are more about creating buzz for the benefit of stockholders than necessarily products/service that we'll see come to the light of day...
My prediction? One or the other company won't be around to do it's end of the bargain... that is unless M$ swoops in for it's own nefarious media platform purposes...
but that's just me =)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Fortunately the crackers/hackers and build-your-own camp don't agree.. as far as im concerned, if its in my house, i record what i like, get the fuck off my land.
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The movie groups dont want people paying $4 for a PPV, then saving it on their Tivo forever, and being able to watch the movie whenever. It makes sense to me, someone who doesnt want all the extras or stuff could save the PPV on their tivo forever (as long as the tivo works). Especially with hacks and upgrades that can allow Tivo to have 500+ hours of recordable space, its just the industry trying to keep broadcasts from turning into a library. They want to be able to sell it to you twice (once at the movie theater or on a PPV as a broadcast, then sell you the DVD for your library). I dont know if its "nice" of them to try and sell the same thing (the experience of the movie) twice through different means, that I havent figured out.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Your argument is interesting... too bad it has nothing to do with the article, which is about cable/sat pay-per-view.
Actually, I'll bet Porn is driving this.
The price of Porn on PPV is significantly higher than regular movies. According to some friends in the business, the entire PPV business model is based around porn. There's no way they can make a profit based on the random "Let the kids watch some movie they've probably already seen". They just have to offer non-adult programming to make it acceptable to the community.
Since many people are embarrased to buy Porn, even via mail order, they certainly won't go rent it at the local video store. So they use PPV.
By expiring it, they guarantee a revenue stream, compared to letting the viewer record a few dozen shows and repeatedly viewing them.
No mystery here. Move along.
1) Pay-per-view is just that, Pey PER View, PVRs were not concieved with the notion of allowing you to permanently archive TV/Movies - you don't rent a movie from blockbuster and expect to retain a copy of the movie when you go to return it, do you? VCRs weren't even designed with this in mind, hence the Betamax decision. 2) Along the lines of archiving video, the rulings which make TiVo and the like possible basically because it is for time-shifting, this is not the same as PERMANENT archiving. 3) TV stations make money by selling advertisement, they don't make money by paying for broadcast rights. This is their reason for skipping commercials plain and simple. Making information free costs money, are you going to pay for it?
Doesn't this imply that when you order PPV content that you are actually buying a time limited liscence to view that content? Isn't this a "new" restriction that wasn't there before?
SPAM
Here's the typical outcome of TiVo and Replay's concessions:
Wife: Honey, you better jerk off quick, Jenna's about to be deleted!
Husband: Thanks dear!
what are your usage rights with a TiVO? what they want you to have. it's a locked technology with asterisks all over, licensed, and tightly bound. you have the right to watch something that they allow you to watch.
on a "purchased video," which really is a purchased piece of media with a little licensed artwork on the label and case and a licensed video production embedded in its code, you have a limited right of personal viewing without any rights for re-release or commercial or non-profit showing to groups. some laws appear to create the right to make a backup copy, and there has been some litigation over this. there is no explicit right to watch it over and over and over again in perpetuity, but an implicit right that as long as it holds up, you could watch the thing as often and as repetively as you personally want for personal enjoyment.
it looks like any other distribution method is trying to renege on the implicit right to review the work any time, any number of times.
so let the marketplace vote. the standard DVD and CD are just fine as they are for me, and if they do some sort of retro-fsckup in new players, I also have several 16mm projectors, and I will go back to a different analog technology if I have to make some sort of pissy personal point about how many times I can watch an old 16mm print bought off eBay or at a garage sale.
I personally think as the limited and locked parts of the story become clear, the limited and locked methods of distribution will crap out like DiVX-original (there is a digital stream out there called "divx" now, probably just to piss off the moneygrubbers at circuit city who were big into the "dies next month" project.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Just another reason to build your own.
So what is the current best open source PVR software?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Please reply with links people! Links to good web sites that have Bit Torrent links for shows! Thank you and enjoy the show.
If you send them a written letter, that carries a lot of weight. Get your friends to do it too. I've heard that each written letter is counted as representing from 10 to 20 other people that didn't bother to write.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
And have you actually seen anything new or different on it any time after the first three months?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How about at least a "Save Until I Watch" feature?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It doesn't just cost your $4 to save it on your Tivo forever. It's $4 + % of Tivo capacity used * Total Tivo cost.
At some point, just buying the DVD is more economic.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Time to switch to Myth TV!!!
I bought a new, fast PC with a big hard drive.
:-(
I bought a PVR card.
I spent several hours getting the PVR drivers installed.
I spent several more hours getting MythTV installed
Wow, it works!.
But I forgot - there's very little on TV I have any interest in watching, much less recording.
the person that typed up this little abstract (as well as a whole lot of the /. crowd) is really starting to bug me, throwing around the term "fair use". Fair use has to do with doing whatever you want with something you own, implying that owning something gives you permission to do whatever you want with it, within some limits (with this, i wholeheartedly agree). however, there is no violation of your fair use rights when someone makes a device that can do less than you want it to; in this case, they are just trying to protect the copyright holders.
On a related note, I think the whole FairPlay/PlayFair thing is kind of ridiculous; when you bought the song (or started using iTunes), you agreed not to circumvent the DRM, which of course many people who use this software are violating, citing that "hey i bought it, i can do whatever i want with it". Just because you can doesnt mean you should -- i agree that the government really shouldnt be stepping into matters like this (and abortion), but while they are, why not just follow the law, and speak out against it, instead of being hypocritical.
-- hytmal
I will check out the Knoppix thing, that might be what I need. But then I will need to go build a MythTV capable PC. Why doesn't someone (hello ThinkGeek!) sell one in a nice A/V form-factor with MythTV pre-installed and pre-tested? I for one would gladly pay $50-$100 extra to avoid the hassle of building it all by hand.
sulli
RTFJ.
What else do you need?
Sleep is futile.
What me worry... I don't realy mind the quality loss between digital and analog. SO I just hook up everything to my capturecard.
Let them build all the DRM and copy protection they want.
As long as I can see it or hear it, I WILL be able to record it and keep it.... For as long as I frigging WANT!
P.S. And that goes double music.
So long as I get to keep the PPV movies for "limited times" as defined by the Supreme Court "justices" that upheld the CTEA, I'm fine with it.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I recently got a much higher-paying job. I've been planning to get a nice big HDTV and a Tivo.
Guess I won't be doing that anymore.
Watch their sales drop . . .
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
If the memory erasing device featured in Men in Black was ever invented, I can see the MPAA standing outside every movie theater in America flashing the audience as they depart.
"Sorry, you have no rights to remember any portion of this movie. Your brain is in violation of international copyrights."
I think additional restrictions (time, resale, long term crypto control) on copyrighted content are pure bs. Either choose total private contract enforcement not copyright infringement or follow 300+ yrs of copyright evolution to get goverment priviledge. Also fair use - how do I clip and keep 5-10% for political comment, criticism etc? Screw Tivo, my son or other teen will build my next computer as an PVR.
Just buy a DVD recorder !!!
IF the two companies were the ONLY providers of PVRs, than you could be right
Patents tend toward that very outcome.
http://www.jdonavan.net/myth/screens/mythphone1.jp g
Just for the MS Trolls who keep saying there is no innnovation is OSS.
...the low limits are absurd.
I might accept that the owners have a valid interest in offering an actual limited time rental. However, limiting viewing to within 24 hours of starting, or to only a week to view it at all, is too absurdly small to get my business.
Some of us acutally have things to do other than watching the tube. I'll frequently take a whole week to watch a show my ReplayTV recorded, and most shows are just dumped from the buffer unwatched. This is OK for free, but not if I pay!
As usual, the principle could be workable, but they cannot be trusted to be reasonable.
Oh, well... I'm having way too much fun living life to bother playing their stupid games...
http://tvt.milfclan.com/ Little more to the specific topic. And not so bloody slow and unstable.
you cannot find the term "fair use" codified anywhere in US Code or statute. the idea of fair use is based on a premise that had long been held before the advent of digitial technology. it harkens back to a time when you owned an LP or a cassette tape and that tape or album would wear out, be stolen, or break and you had to fork out the cash to buy a replacement. well..since we can now make almost perfect digital copies at home and share them almost endlessly, the industry has managed to get the congress on board in wiping out that long held notion of fair use. i don't like the way it's heading but no one can deny that this is indeed the course our country has taken.
Is it 5:30 yet?
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
What part of "restraint of trade" didn't they understand?
Take a look at the FTC Guidelines on horizontal agreements among competitors. There's a good chance that the FTC could challenge this. Even under the Bush Administration, the FTC regularly takes antitrust enforcement actions.
i guess the users that bought the tivo's with the dvd-burner don't really have to give a flying hoot.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
However the Fair Use section of copyright law is written exactly the opposite [of prohibiting everything]
Just because 17 USC 107 gives the courts a lot of leeway doesn't make 17 USC 1201 any less strictly prohibitive. It appears thst the MPAA sees offering performances of audiovisual works by pay-per-view transmission only at specific times as a copyright owner's right, and any device capable of time-shifting PPV more than the studio allows would qualify as a circumvention device under the DMCA.
When you break the law you just give the **AA's an excuse to become even more draconian and you ruin it for the rest of us.
They don't need excuses, they have money to do the talking for them.
Sadly, probably the only way to illustrate what we give up with this intellectual property regime involves breaking the law to show people what they're missing. Which prevents more people from seeing and not just hearing about the harm. A Catch-22, I'm afraid...
...there was economic incentive to provide fair-use rights, you wouldn't need a law - the free marked would make it happen. Copyright prevents a free market (by making the copyright holder a monopolist of his work), which is why we have laws to prevent the consumer from getting shafted. People in general won't stop buying content because it is restricted - your personal loss is greater than the copyright holder's.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings