Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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 if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the two companies are both trying to make their restriction mechanisms as easily-breakable as possible. Think about it - if you had to choose between a TiVo and ReplayTV device, and a crack was only available (or at least only easily installed) for the TiVo, which one would you buy?
This space intentionally left blank.
Well, the Tivo has already been hacked. So, just get your movie from Netflix...then, burn it directly off onto DVD. This would all be digital too wouldn't it?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you dislike the terms of the agreement, you are more than welcome to purchase your own copy of the movie and watch it whenever and however many times you wish.
Blockbuster leases you tapes. They don't sell them to you (well, at least the rentals)
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...
Its their content. Its their business how they license that content to you.
But the distribution methods are not theirs, this is why they are lobbying to control both content & distribution.
Take baseball, aired on public tv, they block home games, so the content owners can try to make more money, when in fact they are sponsered by the public (for the stadium) and agree to air games.
Regulations worth both ways, there is no reason you have to give content providers a gold ruler, and make everyone else measure up.
If they don't want to follow our standards, they can keep their content off tv. Works both ways.
Your view of intellectual property is flawed. Physical objects can be created or destroyed. They are composed of natural resources. Ideas are natural resources, just like anything else. Creative content is created from ideas, just like physical property is constructed from other resources.
Physical property can be transferred from one person to another. If I give you something physical, I do not have it anymore. If I give you some creative work or idea, I can still give it to others, and I have not lost anything. The idea of "property" does not transfer completely from physical objects to ideas. After understanding these differences, we can now discuss the current legal and economic situation of physical security versus security of intellectual property.
It is my right to protect my physical property through physical security. There are laws which punish those who would violate my physical security, because they will be depriving me of my right to my own property.
Bring this over to intellectual property, and you see that the model no longer fits. It is my right to protect my intellectual property through technical or other security. There are laws which punish those who would violate security on intellectual property, because (???) why? The owner hasn't lost anything but some "right to profit" which is not codified anywhere.
I do not have the right to profit from a flawed business model. The owner of some content wishes to prevent me from doing something which I could do legally, if his security was not in place. When I break his security, the only law I have broken is the "no breaking security" law. This is not equivalent to trespassing or theft, because no crime is being committed, besides "breaking the DMCA."
In the world of physical security, it is illegal to pick the lock on someone else's door without permission, because it serves no legal purpose. Whether you are going to steal from their house or not is immaterial, because there is no other valid reason to pick their lock. In the world of intellectual property, it is now illegal to "pick the lock" on a "protected" file, IN SPITE OF the fact that there are many legal uses, including exercise of my fair use rights.
Copyright in this country was fought bitterly until the idea of fair use rights were created as well. Many years later, the companies with their found copyright powers want to remove our fair use rights through technical security, and expect laws to prevent us from "picking the locks." Do you see my point?
The only loss to the author is the ability to charge me extra for something which I should be allowed to do anyway.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.