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Cablevision Sued Over Remote DVR Plan
zoobid writes "NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox have joined together and filed an injunction against Cablevision over their plan to introduce remote DVRs to their customers. 'They argue that while precedent may allow for legal time-shifting among home TV viewers, Cablevision's plans should require a special license from the broadcasters.' Cablevision's plan to create a centrally-hosted DVR was previously covered here on Slashdot."
This is so close to true "tv on demand" that the networks have to be crapping their pants.
How do you justify marking up your "must see tv ads" for those crap shows that you slip between the good shows, if it can be proven that people watch the good shows on a completely different day, and don't watch the crap shows at all? If they have to flat rate, or discount their ads, that'll be a huge chunk of their profit.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They are worried that it may set a precident of viewers having more control over what they watch! Can you imagine if they had this attitude back when VHS was coming around? Think of all those people that recorded shows instead of watching it at 10:30PM!
Burn karma, burn.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Maybe one day IT companies will focus on products and services instead of legal activities.
One should wonder how much resources those companies waste in useless legal actions and how much they earn from the same.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I've long since given up watching anything on broadcast or cable - I just download or buy stuff I'm interested in to watch when I want to. Why the hell I should have to watch things when the cable company or the broadcaster specify and then sit through adverts in content I've supposedly paid for is completely beyond me.
Don't let the networks win this one, or the battle is going to go on for years. Once it has left their antenna, they lose their control over it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So let me get this straight... you can use a personal DVR in your home (rented from the cable or dish provider), and record/playback/etc all you want - but to provide the same functionality as an online service is somehow different? I don't get it!
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As has been pointed out here on /. many times before, any industry whose business model relies on controlling the channels of media distribution is now dying a death from obsolescence, thanks to ubiquitous electronic distribution.
This legal move by the networks, which obviously has no customer benefit, is clearly a sign of this malady. We are now seeing more and more suits like this as companies, desperately trying to cling to a failing business model, turn to the law to prop up their house of cards. And it is their last, best hope. The government is quite likely the only organization more resistant to change than the media industries.
The content providers aren't content with ramming broadcast flags down our throats; now they want to mandate the design of every freaking piece of hardware between them and the patsies (i.e., consumers) whom they target. This kind of legalistic BS has to come to a stop.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Although I'm not certain how much is truth and how much legend, I understand that a major hotel chain has been seeking the blessing from the top three or four television networks to "DVR" the major primetime shows and offer them to their guests on a pay-per-view basis.
So imagine arriving late to the hotel the night before to your business meeting and being able to watch 24 in your hotel room 8 hours after it ran.
At issue was getting a revenue-sharing agreement setup between the networks and the hotel. Oh, and coming up with a pricepoint that didn't rape the guests.
Although it may someday come to pass, the greedy networks are the barrier to this kind of Hotel DVR system. So it's of no surprise to me that Cablevision is being sued over essentially the same thing that the hotel chain is too afraid to implement on their own.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Major threats to the industry? I assume they mean the advertising industry...BS. as long as there are products and mediums to advertise on advertisers will make money. God forbid TV isnt as much as a cashcow as it used to be... Do they think they're the only industry that needs to adapt at times? Now they'll start pushing the price of internet advertising (costs associated)and producing commercials to compensate and visually spam more shit on the web. If companies only learned to embrace the future instead of fighting it, they'd be more sucessful and we'd probably be more technologically advanced as a culture.
Walk with Music;
Bzzzzzap!
There are only two kinds of shifts involved here:
1. The timeshift of watching programs at a time later than they're broadcast. We've had this right for a long time and it's not in question.
2. The location-shift of the DVR from your living room to the cable company's server room. And this is no different than asking your neighbor or family member to record a program for you that you'd miss getting otherwise.
In fact, if some kid started a neighborhood business of recording programs for people who are away and couldn't get them on their own VCR's, charging them for that service and giving them the tapes afterwards, it would be functionally exactly the same thing. And if the television networks then tried to shut him down and send him back out to selling lemonade and cutting grass instead, the uproar over this would be huge -- and all of it directed against the greedy, selfish, innovation-killing television networks who provide their product for fee over the public airwaves. That same uproar should be directed against the television networks over this plan as well.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The History Channel and The Discovery Channel.
You mean the Hitler Channel and the Psychic, Obese, Midget, Undead, Alien Bigfoot gets a Makeover for Jesus Channel?
Go read a book.
KFG
This is the first time that I agree with the entertainment industry on a case like this; if the end user wants to record it, share it with friends, re-watch ot timeshift content, fine BUT this is the cable company cacheeing all content and doing mass redistribution, for profit -- thus it is a commercial enterprise using the content in a way that their license doesnt allow, pretty clear cut to me.
This is just like what MP3.com wanted to do. They wanted to create a centralized music database. Once the program verified that you owned the original CD, it unlocked the music in the database for a user. This was so people could access the music they rightfully owned (supposedly) from anywhere.
And as we all remember, the RIAA destroyed this from ever happening, because they said that MP3.com was essentially profiting of selling their property.
Essentially, Cablevision wants to create a centralized database of all TV programming and "sell it back"
Shopping for shoes is not a "slant" on cosmology.
I was not addressing issues of bias, but basic content. Dr. Who is about the only thing I watch on the Sci-Fi channel right now, because it would be more accurately called the Horror Channel; and I'm not a horror fan. Could be worse, I suppose. For it's first year or two I called the History Channel the Boring Channel; and I'm a history geek.
National Geographic, on the other hand, was great for about the first year, but now has started running much the same drivel to be found on the other, Disney owned, "educational" channels. Watch any one of them for about a year and you've seen everything you're going to see on all of them combined for about five years.
Books are "on demand." If I want to learn about Alexander I can learn about Alexander without having to wait out half a day of infomercials and "ghost hunting" to get there.
If you prefer video most libraries these days are also pretty well stocked with the better science and history shows on tape/DVD; and you've already paid for them.
KFG
I can squeeze in about 5 hours a week, and between the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and occasional Adult Swim shows that is 5 hours a week. I also like some sci-fi shows, there are movies, old MST3Ks I've never seen, etc.
I don't want to bump up tv viewing time, so I'm going to have to accept to let things go. Or pile up, which is what is happening now.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I suspect that some of the impetus for this comes from Scientific Atlantic (now owned by Cisco). They make settop boxes and DVRs. Their DVRs are the ones supplied by Time Warner cable, and perhaps Cablevision. Among the products in their line are DVRs that can record up to two channels at a time for each of up to 4 set top boxes. This means that you can record and/or watch up to 8 shows at a time in your home.
I think what makes the broadcasters crazy is that this can have all sorts of effects on how ratings are captured, how advertisers pay, how TV shows are used. While they're talking about the IP issues, I think the real fear is not being in control of the economics of broadcasting.
As other have pointed out, from a consumer perspective, this technology is what those of us who watch lots of TV want. I have two DVRs, one on each of my 2 TVs, and wish I could see what was recorded on one unit on the other. I'm not alone in this.
It'll work out. We'll pay more. Get less. The american way.
whats so wrong with advertising embedded in TV shows. Why can't Tony Soprano be driving a coke, or eating at a Wendys and commenting how good the sandwich is. I'd much prefer embedded ads then the overt commercials where you have to listen to some jingle or paid spokeperson, those just insult my intelligence. I think they could make more money this way, as it is I don't know anyone in my demographic that doesn't flip the channel when commercials come on.