Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Wins Permanent Injunction Against EchoStar
ZenFodderBoy writes "It's official! Judge Folsom entered his ruling today granting TiVo nearly $90 million in damages, plus granting a permanent injunction calling for the disabling of nearly all of EchoStar's DVRs within the next 30 days. EchoStar's motion to stay the injunction pending appeal was denied. Additionally, the judge reserves the right to grant additional damages in the future, so treble damages may still be coming. Excellent news for TiVo!"
What is this going to do to Tivo stock I wonder? ;)
Forum Foundry, Inc.
"Excellent news for TiVo!" Bad news for consumers.
Thanks for posting some links to the background of this story and for the detailed introduction and background that you added to your entry and for not just linking to another blog entry elsewhere on the...
Oh wait.
He who lives by the submarine patent claim dies by the submarine patent claim...
Tivo's time will come.
Disabling all those PVRs is I guess one way to see justice, but in the end it seems that the customers will wear the brunt of the impact.
There isn't much information on this finding, but I'd take a guess and say that customers that have signed up for EchoStar's service may be in for a rude shock when their PVR stops working.
I'm up for rooting for Tivo but I guess this is business, and if Tivo couldn't find a way to sell their products to the broadcast vendors without going to litigation it makes for a difficult times.
I apologize for not being in the know, but does this mean that DirecTv's dvr service is now worthless?
I must bid you farewell....... "walks out amid the gunfire"
EchoStar must disable DVRs, judge rules
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
instead of saying tivo is going to hurt consumers (which they are, in a way) they are doing this for their best interestes. if they can offer a licence agreement for people who what to use the patent, then it would be a win for everyone.
Mod others as you would have them mod you.
If you can't compete on product and service, you deserve to go out of business.
Disclaimer: I work for Echostar.
I'm just a Technical Support Representative, but I've been reading about this case long before I worked there.
The initial ruling, I applauded. Yes, Echostar screwed up with Tivo. Yes, I think they should have to pay for that mistake, in monetary terms. Tivo earned at least that much.
However - DVR functionality at this point is just about commonplace - Dish/Echostar's DVRs perform the same functions that Tivo, and 50 other competing products do, and to tell Echostar that it can no longer compete in this now-established market is tantamount to handing the company over to a Firing Squad.
Nevermind the fact that there are now millions of Dish Network customers that are using DVR recievers, that will find out about this case, find that they've lost the functionality that they have been paying for every month - and place the blame squarely on - guess who? - Tivo.
Now, I like Tivo - and I hope they succeed, and again, I'm more than happy to see them monetarily compensated for the situation. But this is not punishing Echostar/Dish - this is only punishing the consumers who have bought those devices and who use them every day, and continue to do so.
On a personal note - this lawsuit will make my life a living hell, becuase those millions of customers will be calling me to explain why they can no longer use the functionality that they signed up for. The first time I recieve a phonecall asking why our DVR service has disappeared and why they cannot use the hard drive on the device they paid for, is the day that I turn in my resignation.
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Im a subscriber to Dish Network, I love it to death,but if the DVR functionality is cut off, then I will go back to local cable service.
Fuck tivo.
Poor cable service drove me to Dish, DVR ability made me loyal enough to keep the service after local cable got their act together, but without DVR I am back to VHS. No sense in keeping it while at the same time learning to program my vcr... AGAIN!
Lets hope Charlie pulls his head out before push comes to shove.
Now if you will excuse me I have a shitload of stuff (FSTV and TDC mostly) I have to backup to tape (30+hours) before time runs out. Boy, Im going to miss FSTV.
C.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Sorry if you already know the case but I didn't. This seems from a quick google to be a patent case. Neither the article or the summary mention this key word.
Now if someone can dig a bit further than I have time to and post links to the patents themselves we might be able to have a fun technical discussion about their merits.
Eventually the patent should expire and at that point the market would open up and prices would drop significantly. So if you don't like the idea of Tivo then you can wait. What is so bad about patent law? It's a win-win for all. New innovations are protected ecnourageing more innovation and it gives the consumers an appetite for when the patent expires and the market really opens up.
Should we get rid of patent law because it creates a monoploy for a period of time?
While TiVo has come out with a good product at the right time, that doesn't mean they should own the market. Many people around that time were thinking of, and working on, DVRs, TiVo just happened to be the first.
This ruling isn't even good for TiVo, because they can now just rest on their laurels until the patent runs out, and history suggests that that's what they more or less will end up doing.
Wow, I am impressed that you had the guts and decency to post an article about your employers that doesn't entirely defend them without restorting to anonymity.
I sympathise with your impending doom, because I dont reckon they will blame anyone other than the person at the end of the phone.
Once again though I am reminded about why I use slashdot - there is always someone academically knowledgable (for the smart stuff) or with insider knowledge that can add so much to a story.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Echostar played fast and loose with Tivo's IP. It's great that you seem to think Tivo is owed money, but it's Echostar that decided it was worth the risk. Echostar's customers don't have Echostar DVRs because Echostar thought they could get away with something and didn't. I don't see how Tivo takes the fall for that.
Here in Canada Bell ExpressVu is essentialy the Dish Network Canada. In fact, I believe that was the original name before it was changed. As such, they rely on Dishnet for all their receiver technolgy including receiver software, as I understand it. I wonder how this will affect ExpressVu customers given that I have a Dishnet 510 PVR, branded as an ExpressVu model 5900, if at all. I guess in the long run the solution is going to involve a lot of money from Dishnet changing hands to Tivo. There is no way that Dishnet will let the situation stand and perhaps they're about to get their ass handed to them much like RIM with the Blackberry.
I miss consulting for Echostar! All the managers were cowboy hat wearing good ol' boys from Colorado City. It was the most hilarious and fun group of people to ever work with! To bad our product didn't really work (to much Java way to early) but damn they paid well and let us all chew tabacee' at work! Those were the days... *sigh*
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Isn't anyone else bothered by the fact that all of these customers who BOUGHT this item, can now have it disabled remotely? That's what makes this story interesting to me. Remind me to never buy something that can be taken from me...remotely.
This is all surprisingly pro-patent for Slashdot!
It is a sad day for competition and software development. TiVo's patent is another example of why patents suck. Subtracting the amount of time passed in the media stream during the real time it takes someone to press the play button is obvious, and in fact also reportedly appears in XP Media Center Edition. Obvious things are not patentable, yet TiVo has their patent and is using it to destroy competition. If I were someone who owned one of the EchoStars that will be disabled in the next 60 days, I'd be pretty pissed off.
I'm sure you should have noticed at this point - the Slashdot herd leaders only disagree with patent laws and licensing requirements when it hurts their fancies. Question 1 is always, "Do I like the company and product that is being protected from competition and choice?" - if yes, the legal principles to apply are entirely different than if no. Echostar is simply too late - TiVo has already gotten a positive image and widespread adoption, so don't expect any support here. It's American Grassroots Movement v2.0 on nitro.
See e.g. http://www.webmink.net/2006/08/breach-of-contract. htm#115565138813415169.
I paid extra for receivers with PVR/DVR capability. I pay the DVR surcharge each month for each receiver I have activated that has a DVR. I have 180HRS of recorded programs on my DVR I still want to watch. It looks to me like instead of a deal between Tivo and Dish to make things ok, the Dish customers are going to get royally screwed in this case. We paid, took our time to collect programs to watch, and they are about to be taken away unexpectedly. How about a class action suit on behalf of the Dish customers that are about to lose out? dwg
You're a clown. I don't like or dislike Tivo.
What I hate is seeing a big company trying to steal from an smaller inventor, particularly when it appears to have been done deliberately, and subsequently followed up by an attempt to hurt them in court proceedings.
In that situation, I'd even cheer for SCO if they were the underdog.
Sucks to be EchoStar's customers, but the pain the grand-parent poster who is an employee is feeling is exactly what should happen. Sorry, GP-poster, but if you don't like your company's behaviour, move. Otherwise, you're tacitly supporting such actions.
OK, so I have a Dish PVR, so does everyone else I know, others have MythTV, never met anyone with a Tivo *shrugs* maybe becasue they cost a fortune (all going to lawyers) and doesnt come with any TV programming?
It's the only way I'd watch any TV ever. Without that.. well, there is just never anything on when I'm around to watch it, so I'd just have to cancel the service entirely.
So... Where is the site with the hack to make the functionality never go away?
I give it 24 hours, 72 tops...
-
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
As for TiVo, I really don't see how they can survive without licensing the technology to Dish TV, Direct TV, and others. If TiVo is bundled with my existing equipment, I may pay for the service; however, if I have to purchase another damn box and have another bill to keep track of, then I definitely won't. It isn't just Charlie Ergin and the other Dish TV Senior Management to need to play nice; TiVo should realize that they may get one big payment from Dish TV, but they also want lots of little monthly payments from Dish TV customers who already have the PVRs.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
TFA didn't really tell me anything about what's happening here... but, can't EchoStar legally license the technology from TiVo? I mean, if TiVo wanted them to, of course. Seems to me if I were EchoStar I would really try to do that, rather than piss off tons of customers.
And while I do feel for those customers who are about to lose those services, what else can you do? They don't deserve to be punished, but to let them continue to use something sold to them illegally wouldn't be right either.
Perhaps the solution is for EchoStar to buy all those people a TiVo and gracefully leave the market.
-David
There are many cable companies that now provide DVR capabilities with their service (usually part of a digital cable package -- gives a lot of the same channels available from Dish, DirecTv, etc.). I can't comment on the pricing because I don't use our local provider's DVR service, but I imagine it is comparable to what you're paying for Dish PVR.
Wow, I'm sure happy I kept on using my VCR and didn't buy into all that DVR hype.
Just goes to show what happens when you put too much power into the hands of your content provider.
So, when will RIAA go after Tivo and start suing Tivo customers?
I know Tivo customers usually are not children or dead men,
but maybe RIAA can help out U.S. consumers
by protecting talented video artists?
As a Dish Network customer for the last 6 years and the owner of one of their DVRs, I'll deal with this when the time comes and move to another option. And I'll make goddamned sure that other option isn't a TiVo or anything they are connected with.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Echostar willfully infringed Tivo's patent. Doing it millions of times doesn't make it more aceptable. To the contrary. Echostar will now license (on less favorable terms) the technology from Tivo. They will do this because if they don't, their customers will sue them. So they can either go through a bankruptcy proceeding or pay their way out of a mess entirely of their own making. The consumers are at risk because Echostar placed them there. (Anyone remember when Kodak made instant film cameras?) Tough tittie.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Well. Looks like the prices are going up for DISH network and if I read it right, the increase has already happened. I cancelled my subscription last month because it was just getting to costly to have, and I think that now it's going to go up in order to offset that award and fine they'll be paying!
Hmmm... Cable TV isn't looking quite so bad now.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
The only effect this ruling will have is to *prevent* others entering the market and drive up prices. What exactly is innovative about the above. With old fashioned VHS recorders you could do exactly the same thing. Yet another example why the US patent system is broken.
davecb5620@gmail.com
If it is not too late
I turned that feature off after they rearanged some of the menues to sell me crap. I didn't want it any worse so I shut it off. I just happened to so NO to an upgrade that was requested yesterday. Would that upgrade improve my service - I asked. My answer was - it could be better, but it could and probably would be something I didn't like.
Seems I might have been correct. And lucky.
Good luck to other DishNetwork customers.
Just like in the blackberry case this is about a judge loosing all sense of proportion when it comes to patents. In my opinion patents should be treated as a monetary claim, not as a hostage taking device.
I assume you mean inventing since 'innovating' and inventing are not the same thing. For the best part of the twentieth century people have had no difficulty inventing things, all without the benefits of IP protection. This all changed in 1981 when an appellate court decided in favour of a patent for rubber curing under software control which led to directly to such nonscense as the above Tivo patent.
was Re:never getting a TiVo now
davecb5620@gmail.com
Was the poster being sarcastic or does he really believe it's a good thing?
Well, Shuttleworth (South African started it). South Africa rocks! Word to all the Suthies out there.
I rather feel you are the clown. The distinction that 'it appears to have been done deliberately' is extremely vague. Court proceedings is standard. Which leaves you with 'a big company' and 'a small company'. Essentially, that it all comes down to the sizes of the company involved.
I stand by what I first said - the Slashdot crowd of what I have seen is quite defensive of legal rights, licensing and even obvious patents - when it defends someone products and companies they like. Otherwise very much not. Made worse by, thank you, also that principles change based on the companies involved - smaller companies seem to be treated with different principles than larger companies.
I know there always seems to be the sentiment around here that patents are evil... and those that hold them didn't really innovate & are trying to just litigate their way to the bank (ntp).
If ever there were a case though where I was glad to see a decision go in favor of a patent holder... this would be it. When Tivo was introduced - there really wasn't anything like it... and not only had they introduced a product that really changes the way you watched tv - their 1.0 product was truly amazing, a home run. The interface was intuitive, simple to use & highly funtional. Ever other dvr software I've seen pushed out by cable & satellite company have all seemed like a poor knock off built from some common (poor) framework. To the point where the functionality delivered by some of these dvrs really isn't much more than a tapeless vcr. If this decision happens to force echostar, directv, comcast, rcn and others to use Tivo hardware/software for the next few years - then I think in the long run the consumers will be winners... cause when the time comes and the patent does run out... people will be hooked on 'the good stuff' in the dvr universe & those companies will be forced to offer solutions which actually compete with tivo and drive innovation.
anyways... that's my 2 cents.
disclaimers:
1) while I talk about 'other dvrs' not being too great... I haven't seen too many. I can speak from experience that the comcast one sucks ass... and the directv-brand one seems to be build from a similar model (and reviews of it weren't too favorable). Anyways... having said that... replay tv did look like a valid competitor while it was around (RIP)... and the mythtv & freevo homebrews look great...
2) didn't mean to imply abouve that directv never had tivo... I know they do... I own a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTivo unit. Mainly just commenting on their new homebrew tivo replacements...
Too late for me ... they removed the "disable auto update" functionality in one of the releases.
My wife's the real PVR user in the house, and with 80 hours of stuff buffered, boy is she going to be pissed.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Fuck tivo.
A little misdirected anger?
Maybe you have some other reason to be pissed at Tivo. Don't be mad at Tivo becuase Echostar sold you something they stole from Tivo and got caught.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Why is it that the customer has to suffer? A while ago, when Microsoft lost a patent dispute, they urged customers to apply a Service Pack for Office, and stop using the version that got shipped on purchase!
What fault is it of the customer, if the vendor from who he purchsaed some product / service is found guilty of patent abuse? If Echostar has abused TiVo's patents and sold a few millions of their products... I think a more equitable judgement ought to be along the lines... like, Echostar to pay TiVo the requisite license money so that existing customers may continue to use their products and services uninterrupted.
A patent should not imply that one single company has exclusive rights to implement, sell and support products based out of the said patent. The true purpose of patents is in fact, to spur innovation... not to build monopolies. Echostar might be directed NOT TO sell future products in violation of patents... it appears UNJUST that existing customers suffer a loss of functionality because of this. What if a patent violation happened in a medicinal drug? Patients must vomit already ingested medicines and die?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Which means it's either a Tivo license, or another potential target for Tivo to submarine.
N'thanks.
What astonishes me is that slashdot still fancies GPL-abusing, privacy-raping TiVo.
Fixed.
If they do, they'll lose me as a customer, and thousands like me. They'll just pay Tivo's ransom, and raise my monthly bill by a little bit. Thanks a lot TIVO.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
the date on the patent..
obvious today is not obvious ten years ago.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Personally, I hope Echostar/DISH implodes. The Rectal Rim Surfer's have been calling our home phone DAILY for over two years trying to sell us DISH. We asked to be placed on their DNC to no avail. So, we just got an answering machine and that sufficed until they started calling my mobile phone and ignored five requests in the last three months to stop fucking calling.
I almost got DISH...it appears to be a decent product. I went with cable because HSI came to town at a rate half that of the 1300ms latency phone company. Thanks to all the phone calls (especially the Spanish calls) from DISH and their ignoring our repeated requests to desist, I am now their largest critic. I bad mouth them at every oppurtunity. I claim dozens of DISH rejects in favor of cable, and now, thanks to the admitable skullduggery by Tivo, I should be able to easily adds dozens upon dozens more DISH rejects to my score list.
Burn in HELL DISH!
Nor did I buy Dish PVR because, again monthly subscriptions. I think I should grab one of these Phillips DVRs while it is still on the shelves. Would TiVO go after these companies too?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
All Echostar users should go to the setup menu now and "disable automatic updates". It's a pity that updates, which used to mean improvements, can now mean less functionality. Go to your box(es) now, and disable all update check boxes !
Looks like Tivo is going for a Microsoft-like monopoly over the video-on-demand and record-and-playback market. Yeah, real good for them, I'm certain as now they can charge whatever the want for the service. Meanwhile, customers and other companies that geared up to compete, hopefully keeping Tivo on its toes and the pricing down, lose.
The trial judge did not award treble damages to Tivo because Echostar sought outside counsel that, as it turned out, incorrectly told them that their DVR would not be infringing on Tivo's right. There was no "playing fast and loose" here. Echostar did exactly what any company should do, but still got burned in the process.
I hope TiVos read slashdot...
IANALBTW but I've seen it a few times in my wife's law practice; a client will use the full force of the law to get a judgement in their favor. Then, behind closed doors, they use the leverage of that judgement to negotiate a deal in their favor.
TiVo would be wise to take this approach. Now that EchoStar has been beaten, TiVo has the ability to force EchoStar to sit down at the negotiating table and ink a deal that would put TiVo software and TiVo IP, under a paid license of course, into the homes of all those EchoStar customers. For them, its a ready made customer base and it makes them look magnamious in their 'victory' over EchoStar.
We will have to see.
I love this judge. None of this pussyfooting around like with the Blackberry case. 'You're in violation and you shut down now, no exceptions, motions denied, and if you keep whining, I swear to God Almighty I'll throw this gavel at your forehead!'
I've really got to side with Tivo here. This is straight forward, whether 1 company stole the patent or 50. Just because 50 companies all stole the same idea and created their own markets for it, it's still theft. You steal, you lose. Why is this such a "bad for consumers" things? Bad because we won't let companies get away with theft with a slap on the wrist?
Screw the media companies. They've been suing us for years for infringement, now they get a taste of their own medicine. I can't wait until Tivo takes on every other media provider that uses DVR. The fur will fly and customers will jump ships, demand refunds, and maybe they'll finally get good customer service, instead of that snotty operator who knows you'll never leave because you only have 1 real alternative. And in the end, practices will be more respectful of other companies, of indemnifying customers, and for going with the original source of technology to ensure quality.
This is a win-win for Tivo and consumers in the end. It's a win for the inventor and innovator, and a lose for talentless copy-cat hacks trying to protect their own regional monopolies. It's David vs. Goliath... and Goliath's cousin, and nephew, and brothers, and grandma, and David just whipped all their asses.
It's almost like watching Ralph Nader beat both the Democrats and Republicans, only this is Cable (who's mascot is also ironically an ass) and Satellite (who's mascot is a turtle... on downers... taking a nap... for the next 6 months).
I8-D
If you can't beat - litigate them.
Here's the key issue. TiVOs patents are for ANALOG signals.
EchoStar records the digital streams, in digital form, still encrypted. When played back, they have to be decrypted.
It's akin to TiVO suing people with VCRs because they can record every episode of something, using an organic computer to determine the appropriate record dates and times and setting it up to do so.
TiVOs patents are obvious extensions, given the ability to read a program guide, and pick out the shows you want to record.
Add to that, the ability that EchoStar has, that I don't believe TiVO has. The ability to only record NEW episodes of a program, vs all episodes (which it also has).
TiVO also has a sucky self changing EULA, which has caused strife over the years.
ie - "By watching something previously recorded, you agree to bind yourself in contract with us for an additional year from the point of watching" or some such.
I hope they appeal it to the next level, and that at that next level, they get a judge with a clue.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I had this happen to me once.
I had just gotten Charter Cable. I had been using a ReplayTV box, which had the 30 second skip feature, and some other features I liked (like the ability to download shows to my Mac). But, I figured I'd get rid of one box, and switch to Charter's PVR, which was made by Motorola.
I lost some features, but it seemed to be better integrated, so I was fairly happy. Then, one day, I punched my "30 second skip" button, only to skip ahead 15 minutes!!! I was like, huh?!? So, I rewound the 15 minutes at 8x speed, to try the button again. I skipped another 15 minutes! After a few times to make sure I wasn't dreaming, I called Charter to tell them my box was broken. They replied, "No, it's not broken. We turned that feature off remotely at the request of the advertisers, because they say they are losing too much money from people skipping their commercials."
Eventually, realizing that $60 a month for very little good content and a remotely-sabotageable PVR wasn't worth it. I went back to limited basic cable. The tech who unhooked me said, "Dang, you are the ONLY person that I've ever seen get off the 'crack' and return a PVR!"
I now have MythTV and limited basic cable. If I search hard enough, I can find movies and programs worth watching, after I transcode them to remove commercials!
This is the major problem with today's patent system, IMHO. I think a great many problems can be solved with a simple solution:
This would accomplish a couple of things. First of all, it would stop this nonsense of building a market and then plundering it with a finally granted patent. Ideally, it would also help the approval process by timing the grant with first-to-market. The patent office could then see if a market builds naturally while they are evaluating the patent and use that information to help decide it's obvoiusness (1-click comes to mind). Finally, point 3 would force patent owners to act quickly rather than wait to essentially extort a company that has built a mature product with a decent market share.
I realize that this might make companies more paranoid of trade secrets, but aren't those what the patents publicly mimic in the first place? Kind of a legal framework for "secret ingredients"? It's not a perfect solution and I'd love input, so flame away.US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
The ruling didn't say that Echostar had to kill all of their DVR's. The ruling said that Echostar had 30 days to negotiate a licensing arrangement with TiVo. TiVo has some great leverage in the negotiations, but that's because Echostar refused to negotiate previously, preferring to play "hard ball" in court, and lost.
This is, by the way, how basic patents work. There's no "it's popular, so you don't have to pay to license the patent" rule. For example, Motorolla has a patent on putting a heat sink on a transistor, and every other electronics company pays them for it. There's an engineer that has the patent on on-screen programmable VCR's, and he gets paid for every single VCR manufactured. The way the world works, that engineer doesn't have a monopoly on on-screen programmable VCR's, but every VCR manufacturer has to negotiate a license before they can (legally) ship their product.
This won't affect Echostar customers, or technical support representatives, unless Echostar decides that they'd rather screw their customers than cut a deal with TiVo. At that point, resigning is a reasonable course of action.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Nevermind the fact that there are now millions of Dish Network customers that are using DVR recievers, that will find out about this case, find that they've lost the functionality that they have been paying for every month - and place the blame squarely on - guess who? - Tivo.
I think you give the public too much credit...by far. Unless someone is spoon feeding them crap on the phone when they call to complain (..."it's Tivo's fault"...), John-Q is more likely to react like this.
"Maaa....the echostar recorder stopped work'n."
"Well call them to fix it."
"k"
"Echostar...my thing is broken. It needs a fix'n"
"I'm sorry, but we can no longer offer that service because we didn't have the right to offer it in the first place."
"Dang you. I want it fixed!"
"I'm sorry sir, we may have a solution for you in the near future, but by court order we're forced to discontinue the service."
*click*
In other words, John Q. isn't going to know squat unless phone support is feeding them a line of crap about how Tivo is evil because Echostar screwed their customers by stealing someone else's patent.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
I would agree with that argument if TiVo hadn't been attempting to resolve patent issues with Echostar for several years. E* can hardly claim ignorance on this issue. They can't now say, "Well we infringed on the patent, but we didn't know!" IMHO, it was E*'s defiance that enabled cable companies to feel free to implement their own DVRs.
This is definately a win for TiVo. This is definately a loss for E*, but I think the loss was E*'s own doing. It's also a loss for Time Warner, who is not in negotiations with TiVo and a win for Comcast who is. And depending on whether or not you think that TiVo functionality is better than all the other DVRs out there, it may or may not be a win for the consumer.
But as far as E* is concerned, this is exactly the outcome they should have expected if they lost the case. As far as E*'s customers are concerned, I am almost entirely certain that E* will not shut off DVR service to their customers. They'd lose way too many customers to DirecTV - who does license TiVo - or to cable companies who have no injunction over their heads. What will happen is that E* will pay a license fee to TiVo in order to retain its customer base. E*'s profits will go down a little bit. E*'s stock will take a hit. TiVo's profits & stock will go up. E*'s customers won't experience anything different.
$.02
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Wouldn't it be nice for all the Dish customers who purchased their own receivers to say call Tivo and demand payment for a device that they have rendered useless?
Customer service number for Tivo.
Live agent support available: Monday - Sunday
7:00 AM - 8:00 PM Pacific
Phone number: 877-367-8486
Ok, the inventors have been protected (to the tune of 90 MILLION dollars, which is a pretty sweet tune unles you're the one whose dangling corpse is whistling in the wind...), now how about the rest of us? I'm a DishNetwork customer, and though I don't own a DishNetwork PVR (I prefer to gripe about my *other* brand video recorder...) I wonder what recourse affected customers have (other than bend over and try to think about their "happy place")?
This is the Slashdot community -- a bunch of geeks who'd hack their own pacemakers if they thought they could up the performance a bit (or just to say they'd done it) -- what say ye?!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194404&cid=159 33993 has the agreement...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"... Excellent news for TiVo!"
You wouldn't happen to work for TiVo would you?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
That's exactly what Apple's iTunes did to me last year.
I had purchased about ten songs, and after the patch came out on the internet to defeat the authentication, Apple released an 'upgrade' to the iTunes software. I didn't upgrade (as I had no need to try to download the 50 mb forced bundled package of quicktime+iTunes+startupapp+pluggin+etc), and in short order found my computer 'deauthorized'. I tried to reauth, and was denied, saying one could only authorize using the latest software.
Apple fans beware: Your DRM is as dangerous as anybody else's. I bought songs, and had them taken away from me, with no recourse except to take my computer to a internet access point, download a new version of the software, watch it install other irritating components onto my machine, to simply regain access to material I had already owned and paid for.
After that, I found another utility that removed the encryption (falls under the inaccessible-due-to-broken-software fair use clause in the DMCA) and now play those songs I purchased in any media player I choose. And I will never buy anything from Apple again, since I'm not certain they won't just take it away at their whim.
many many times. How many different implementations exist for this truly trivial technology? Yes, it's trivial - it's nothing more than capturing a stream and writing it to disk with some meta data, and perhaps a GUI to look at meta-data from both the recorded info and future info (guide).
If Dish infringes on Tivo's "patents", then Tivo probably infringes on some cable company's patent for the "guide" feature.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
nahh, what I am gleefully looking foreward to is the mass amounts of hacks to reactivate these things and make the Tivo part work again, probably for free.
Tivo was really stupid here... they are about to flood the market with cheap hardware that will give people the chance to hack their service and make them functional again.
The free tivo hacks will move from underground to mainstream overnight.
(No I dont care about hacking their service, I want to use somethign else to act as the guide data and put the unit back into operation status.)
Thanks Tivo!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think everyone is missing what this really means... TiVO won't want to risk losing on Appeal and DISH won't want to risk having to shut down their DVR service. I predict a settlement between the two companies in the next two weeks that will resolve all outstanding claims.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
For those saying Tivo costs a fortune...WTF are you talking about? Available right now from Circuit City / Worst Buy starting at $69 a unit. Get the FOOCK outta here with this Tivo cost too much. Echo lost becuase they tried to go around Tivo and violate thier patents. Get over it. Echo is no nice company either just like DTV is not a nice company. That is all
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
I have your DVR. The software sucks- license the real Tivo code.
If I had the mod points to give you +1,Insightful, you'd get one.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Setting aside the appropriateness of a patent system etc. for a moment, I have a specific question. What about the DVR systems sold thru cable companies by Scientific-Atlanta (and their competitors if any)?
This ruling seems to affect only EchoStar. If this is true, does that mean that everyone else gets off for free?
Cheers,
Bruce.
EMail: http://noknoknumber.com/100-0012
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/aboutus/presski t/press/index.shtml
I apologize in advance if I'm being ignorant. But doesn't this kill the term DVR/PVR. Everything will be TiVO now right?
I'm seeing it as anything related to time shifting television must be licensed from Tivo. Maybe its a D* receiver maybe its an E* receiver, they all go back to TiVO.
Eventually all the slashdotters that are applauding the ruling will coin the word "T$vo", T$vo will not provide updates fast enough, will not work with enough peripherals, and will cost to much. Hackers will learn the ins and outs, and recorded programs will be lost to worm and virus attacks. T$vo will, of course, be blamed. An underground movement will start, an open-source solution if you will, but in this case it will be illegal, since if it relates to time-shifting... you owe T$vo money.
Brilliant...
No, Echostar/Dish would be the proper target.
They are the ones flipping the switch on the device. And that would include devices that:
1) Their customers "own".
2) Are out of warranty.
While I'm not happy about the situation, Tivo is not really at fault here. (Disclaimer: I am NOT a Tivo subscriber, but am, FOR NOW, a Dish subscriber).
Anything is possible given time and money.
...now all my DVR'ed Xtasy Channel PR0N is gonna be nixed. :(
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
2.) This just isn't feasible in a business sense. First off, patents and products are different animals. A patent may cover a part of a product or a method form making it or may just cover a variation of a product different from what is eventually sold. In effect you would be requiring a 3 to 4 year wait in sales for any product without a guarantee that it would be covered by a patent at that time. Also many patents are based on research which is published around the time the patent is filed, typically this fact is mentioned in the publication. Companies seeking patents would have to withold any scientific publications until the patent grant date.
3) There is already law in place to that prevents undue delay in bringing infringement claims. As far as nullifying a patent based on delay, the trademark analogy doesn't work. Trademarks are a unique designation and the law doesn't allow them to be shared within their areas of recognition. Patent grant a right to exclude which may be exercised but don't grant any right to manufacture. A patentee can choose not to sue people infringing their patent without losing the patent. a trademark holder has to go after infringers or risk losing their mark.
The idea your railing against, building and plundering a market, doesn't really exist. Anyone going into the market after Tivo knew that there would be patent issues and were on notice. This is pretty universal across the manufacturing world. If someone else has a new product you have to be aware that they may get patent protection. Its a cost of business with some risk management. There are plenty of companies competing in the DVR market. Some decided to get a license from Tivo and play it safe. Echostar decided to take a gamble and avoid the license fees and now it has to pay the penalty of negotiating a license on Tivo's terms or face losing its business.
Just unplug the DVR from the satellite dish. They will not be able to remotely kill your box and you can watch the 180 hours of programming you have saved.
Which patent was this suit about? ReplayTV came out w/ the DVR first. Did the settlements between the two companies cause ReplayTV to give up some of its intellectual property?
For example, Motorolla has a patent on putting a heat sink on a transistor, and every other electronics company pays them for it. There's an engineer that has the patent on on-screen programmable VCR's, and he gets paid for every single VCR manufactured
What dumb examples. I mean, if something's generating a lot of heat and getting too hot, the obvious thing to do is to stick a heatsink on it (and possibly a fan of some sort, too). And it was inevitable that VCR programming would become an on-screen display (just like the interface to everything else connected to a TV did).
Add 4. If anyone else (of course having seen neither the patent application nor the implementation of the patent as would be required by 1. & 2.) either files a patent or brings to market something which would have infinged the applied for patent, then declare the patent application invalid.
From the Reuters article "EchoStar claimed, among other arguments, that TiVo's motive in filing a lawsuit was to gain additional leverage over EchoStar and other prospective business partners in order to strike lucrative licensing deals."
No $%^&! Is is just me, or did he just look that up under "patent" in the dictionary. If I were the judge, I'd have had a hard time keeping from LOL at that one.
Maybe they simply found outside counsel that told they what they wanted to hear. Obviously they KNEW they were potentially infringing BECAUSE they sought outside counsel! What we don't know is exactly what the outside counsel said. Was it along the lines of "In my opinion you should be OK" or was it "There is no chance that you will have a problem because it's very clear that the technology is totally different."
Boy, someone has a financial interest in TiVo! You guys hate Microsoft but love news like this? That's a double-standard.
With that being said, Here is echostar's press release. For the lazy among us, they are appealing, and the court did rule that they did not act in bad faith, so hold onto your DVRs, they prolly won't get taken away.
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
You know how much many of us has paid to Dish Network to get the DVR upgrade? The HDTV DVR upgrade is around $300. Should we be expecting a refund?
Personally, I wouldn't locate any part of any software business in the U.S. Major risk of litigious annoyance + no real advantage that I can see.
On a sidenote: do you think the US govt and patent office considered this when they decided to make everything patentable?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
What astonishes me is that slashdot still fancies GPL-abusing TiVo.
I don't have cable, satTV, or even a set of bunny ears for my TV (its there for the occasional dvd, thats all) which means I don't really care if tivo stays in business or goes under.
What astonishes me is that even amongst the slashdot crowd, there is very little tolerance for people holding the opinion that GPL isn't always a good thing, a desired thing, or a possible thing. The idea then, that slashdot, in general, likes tivo doesn't surprise me, since the kollectiv think is that in the end tivo will play by the GPL rules, and they will all sit around their tvs and watch a time shifted after-school-special of the tivo execs and the stallman fanatics singing kumbaya around the campfire.
find that they've lost the functionality that they have been paying for every month - and place the blame squarely on - guess who? - Tivo.
No, they'll wake up one morning, and discover that their Dish Network DVR that they paid $299 for, or that spiffy HDTV DVR they leased with a $199 fee didn't record the WWF Bust-Upathon last night, and there's this funny message that comes up when they try to set up another recording. Then they'll call Dish Network/Echostar up, and the phone person will read the script about how there's a terrible problem. The next call will be to DirectTV or the cable company.
Unless they get a solicitation to join a class action lawsuit first...
Companies get sued because their plastic product can be SCRATCHED. Just think of the possibilities in suing a company that collected 200-300 dollars a unit for functionality that they then turned completely off.
The key point that Echostar users are about to have pounded into their heads, is that the DVR is a service, rather than a product. This is subtle enough that most users probably haven't realized -- yet (they're about to). A product can't be easily taken back (imagine Dell saying "oops, we're repoing your computer because we made a mistake"), but service can be denied.
I don't know how Echostar's stuff is marketed/transacted, but in the case of my Tivo, I payed a lot of money up front to buy a box and a "lifetime subscription" and I haven't paid a dime since then. In day-to-day use, the device appears to be a product from my point of view, and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that I'm still calling into a server every day -- a server that is vital to ability of the device to be practical.
It's interesting that so many things are like this. Just about everything that includes DRM, for example. I wonder how Apple iTunes Music Store customers are going to feel when the realization finally hits them that all they money they spent on music, wasn't spent buying music. It was spent buying Yes responses from an authorization server.
My next DVR will be a MythTV box. A device that you own can't be taken from you easily. Furthermore, it primary acts in the interest of the user rather than another party. For example, I know that MythTV, unlike Tivo's software, will never go to extra trouble to show me an advertisement on the main menu. And while I can lose access to a particular server that offers TV listing information (DVRs will always need at least some sort of service provided by someone), I'll never be at any specific party's mercy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If this injunction holds, TiVo will go after every company who makes DVRs. So EchoStar won't be any more disadvantaged than Comcast or DirecTV.
I don't really follow though how this is bad for TiVo. If they place the blame (wrongly) on TiVo, so what? Blame doesn't have a price, money does. If TiVo's IP means everyone who makes a DVR has to pay them a license fee, and customers demand DVRs, then that means that the cable companies and satellite companies are forced to pay TiVo to satisfy their customers. This is in no way bad for TiVo.
TiVo will offer EchoStar a licensing deal to keep the service on. So if it turns off in 30 days, it isn't TiVo punishing EchoStar customers, it is EchoStar doing so.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I doubt that anyone will read this since it's so far down in the comments, but I'm slightly surprised at some of the backlash to this. Don't get me wrong, if I read this and was a Dish DVR user I would be worried and probably a bit furious. However, I see this panning out in one of two ways.
1. The injunction stays and Dish will be forced into licensing the TiVo technology. Hopefully this will mean that Dish will actually start selling actual TiVo boxes. I'm not sure it will go that far, but it would make me happier since I would have the option of going to Dish if I wanted to.
2. The injunction will be overturned or stayed for a long period of time. In this case I can only hope that TiVo still gets the money from Dish.
I can't imagine that Dish will get to a point where they will actually turn off their customer's DVRs.
Now for the reason I'm slightly surprised at the backlash on slashdot. TiVo has a history of being hacker friendly. For the longest time, their stance has been a do what you want as long as you don't blame us when your system stops working. In addition, if you don't want to pay for a DVR or service, MythTV has been around for a while. I don't have one, but I've heard that it's a very stable and easy to install/use piece of software.
Is there really that much on TV worth watching?
Dish network DVRs suck! They tricked me into switching to their service by promising that their HD DVR was "just like Tivo"
WELL, it wasn't. It kept crashing, wouldn't get over-the air HD programming for more than 6 months and finally died (hard drive crashed)
I paid $250 upfront for the unit plus one year contract. In the end it cost me about $300 to leave them and go to DirecTV who offered a real HD Tivo (by Hughes) without any BS.
It's running great and I don't have any problems.
Echostar has to fix this -- whether they work out a license deal with Tivo, get an injunction, or find another fix doesn't make any difference.
I'm an Dish subscriber first and foremost because up until recently (and the jury is still out on recent products from other vendors) they had the best of several not-terribly-good choices for an HD PVR. The day my 942 stops working however, I'll be signing up for one of either DirecTV's or Verizon/FIOS TV's new HD PVRs (I've had FIOS internet for nearly a year).
Frankly, when it comes down to it as a company I like Dish better than any of their competitors, but I don't like them well enough to lose HD PVR capability.
I doubt I'm their only customer that feels this way...
**Federal stay of injunction granted...over rides Texas decision and in appeal as of today, 8-18:
& p=irol-newsArticle&ID=897186&highlight=
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=68854
***should update story / headline?
There's a difference between the outside counsel's opinion that a defendant parades before the world (and the judge) and the defendant's own privileged discussions with its main trial counsel about what outcome they should really expect.
May they crumble to dust as they richly deserve.
Had a TIVO for one day. Would not control any on my Dish receivers.
It only does IR, all here are UHF controlled.
and you can't use it with out their subscription.
The rest of the world uses first to file as it is much easier to prove when you get into a lawsuit. And you cannot file a patent under "first to file" for a publicly disclosed invention.
Anarchists never rule
Tell them it is because of the patent system. They need to know that.
Uhh, frankly. if you are willing to go to this much trouble in the first place... Wouldn't it be easier just to build your own PVR using off the shelf hardware? I mean really, why bother? If you've already got the hardware, then maybe it's worth it to hack it, but otherwise, I fail to see how this is going to "flood the market" with cheap hardware, when the market is already flooded with cheap hardware that you can use to build your own PVR system if you want.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Directv licenses Tivo branded DVRs. I have two. I don't know what dish charges, but Tivo Service with DirecTV is roughly $6 a month on top of whatever programming package you get. IIRC.
I did work for DirecTV for a while but haven't for over a year. I chose to keep the service anyway. My brother in law has dish and personally, I like the tivo better for both perfomance and ease of use. Also the tivo has 2 tuners, so you don't have to stop recording to switch channels, or can record two shows at once.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Oh, they won't be mad at Tivo. They aren't paying Tivo for anything. They'll be mad at Dish Network.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I have a Dishnetwork 510 DVR. They made it very explicit to me when I got it that I was RENTING the device. Now the 501 DVR was actually sold and purchased, and some people hacked it a bit. The 510 and higher numbers are all being rented, with an extra $5 per month tacked on to the bill.
So it is possible for them to disable it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Quick update....
ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 18, 2006--EchoStar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) issued the following statement regarding recent developments in the Tivo Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp. lawsuit:
"We are pleased that this morning, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. temporarily blocked an injunction issued by a Texas Court, while it considers a longer-term stay of that injunction.
As a result of the stay EchoStar can continue to sell, and provide to consumers, all of its digital video recorder models. We continue to believe the Texas decision was wrong, and should be reversed on appeal. We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement."
About EchoStar
EchoStar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) serves more than 12.46 million satellite TV customers through its DISH Network(TM), the fastest growing U.S. provider of advanced digital television services in the last five years. DISH Network offers hundreds of video and audio channels, Interactive TV, HDTV, sports and international programming, together with professional installation and 24-hour customer service.
The injunction has been blocked: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=68854& p=irol-newsArticle&ID=897186&highlight=
> I'm more concerned about what this means for projects like MythTV...
That was also my first reaction. But my second one was the beginning of a great anger against Slashdot for the spin they put on the story.
Tivo is acting as a patent troll, exactly the same as any other patent troll. So why was this story spun as a good thing? Why wasn't this story carried with the same moral outrage against the evils of the US patent system as, for example, Rambus? Or the Amazon one click patent? Lets be consistent here and leave the Tivo fanboi slavish devotion behind. Fuck TIVO!
Democrat delenda est
Are they limited to specific models of DVR receivers or all non-TiVo DVR recievers used by Echostar/Dish? So this means my recently upgraded HD DVR service will be disabled? But not the receiver functionality I presume right?
Sigh....Need to see about picking up an HD Tuner card for my computer...Anyone have a good suggestion?
I'm sure it's buried in one of the stories, but what patient numbers specifically are under dispute?
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
[sarcasm] How dare the rightful owner of this Porche come and take it back from me! I paid good money to a fence for it, so it should be mine! [/sarcasm]
Seriously people, stop hating and threatening Tivo for EchoStar's wrongdoing. Even if you didn't know they were basically a gigantic corporate fence, that doesn't mean Tivo shouldn't recover what is theirs. EchoStar wasn't paying, so the injunction was the only way to get them to pay. Blame EchoStar for being the crooks.
Boom Shanka
*thumbs up* *thumbs up* *thumbs up*
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
Wouldn't it be nice for all the Dish customers who purchased their own receivers to say call Tivo and demand payment for a device that they have rendered useless?
Try dialling 911 and telling them that Echostar sold you stolen IP in the form of the DVR. It is just as useful as the method you endorse, and "punishing" the government for allowing this is just as logical as punishing Tivo for being stolen from.
Learn to love Alaska
When I was looking to get TV a few months back without having to endure the local cable company hell a few months back I had a choice of either Dish or DirecTV. Turns out that Dish was much cheaper but their service is incompatiple with the tivos I have(2 at that point) because they change their channel codes and various things like that.
I like tivo. I have a myth box but I use my tivos due to the interface and I like to hack on them. By going with dish, I would have to give that up. That is why I do not feel bad for those customers. They contracted with a firm that thought they could lockout tivo and knew that they possibly infringed on tivo's patents. They assumed that at worst they would geta slap on the wrist. They were wrong.
Now Dish can either disable the DVRs or negotiate a settlement with tivo. I hope they write the check, as that seems to be what they should have done in the first place instead of putting out their own DVRs with some of the worst interfaces I have ever seen.
I will be sitting at home enjoying all 5 of my tivos next month. Will any of the Dish customers?
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
The courts have found that Tivo invented something. Echostar infringed upon that by making the invention available to the public without properly compensating Tivo. Echostar has to settle with Tivo.
Customers should not be mad at Tivo for exercising their legal right to protect their invention. They should be mad at Echostar for selling a product with a feature that they had no legal right to sell.
The patent system inspires innovation by giving the inventor a time limited monopoly in which to recover their costs. Sounds fair to me.
I have a dish network DVR and i just got off the phone with dish and they told me they just got a stay to prevent them from turning off my DVR, that is good news for all the people that have them
Live life, don't let life live you
Are you joking? Have you not read every other discussion on these weak patents? Nothing was stolen. This was and is a commonplace idea, has been for years. I'm going to patent my left nut, and then sue everyone who uses their left nut. You obviously didn't steal your left nut from me, did you? Nope. It's yours. Same with tivo. They have a right to their name, and to make a cool ass product, and to sell it all over, because they are the best in class.
They don't have the right to whine about trivial functionality that they didn't invent.
Our system has gone batshit.
But there is an "ignorance" mitigation against treble damages.
No, not misdirected at all. This is just another example of the patent system gone wrong.
I just signed up with Dish Network two weeks ago, and have been enjoying the DVR package. I actually wanted to get the Tivo at first,
but since it was hard to find one at a similar price with DirecTV (they only came on their $400 HDTV models), I went with the Dish
Network instead. Thankfully I didn't buy the DVR or sign up for the 18 month contract.
Fuck Tivo. Fuck their shows that can only be saved for 24 hours. Fuck their lawsuit against EchoStar. Fuck their patent legislation
that's bad for consumers.
Once again: FUCK TIVO! I will NEVER buy any of their products!
You nicely sidestepped the remainder of my post where I asked about that very issue. I don't believe Tivo was revolutionary, innovative, nor new as the basis for the DVR was first done in 1965. Margi built the first video/audio capture card in 1995. ATI produced it's first AIW in 1996. The original TiVo product was proposed in 1997.
So, exactly how is Tivo unique? Their software? Everything else seems obvious and logical extensions from earlier and certainly expired by now patents. So, given that the mechanics are obvious, and the software of Tivo is stated to be "vastly superior" to Dish, and that Dish offers what ATI etc offer prior to Tivo's conception even, how is Tivo the little good guy here? Seems like one of those blasted patent trolls to me, especially since "time-shifting" and rewind on a hard drive based system existed in 1965 for crying out loud.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
And lose access to new TV listings.
Then where is TiVo's license price list?
"Stole"?! Did Tivo lose their precious, obvious SOFTWARE?
"In a sudden twist of events, a Washington D.C. court has allowed the continued use of DISH PVRs, sold by EchoStar Communications."
Here, on ExtremeTech
Can someone pretending to be a lawyer (we know there are no real lawyers on slashdot) explain to me how it is legal for someone to come into my home and take something of mine? I own my EchoStar DVR, and I don't pay a monthly fee to use it. If either of those were true, then I can see disabling the unit or discontinuing the service. But it's mine.
I have never heard of a product being sold, later to be found in violation of a patent, and then all the consumers who bought having it taken from them. If someone sold a DVD player that violated someone's patent, would they be allowed to come take them away from anyone who bought it!? And isn't that kind of double-jeopardy anyway? I mean they got money from the infringer, and then the consumer had to go out and buy the product again!
Xesdeeni
So do you play any games other than Gridlee, Poly Play, and Robby Roto? Where did you get the ROMs? Most people who use MAME get their ROMs in a manner that is just as illegal as what EchoStar did.
You gave them permission at the voting booth by voting for candidates that support expansion of the powers of copyright and patent holders.
Great. Now our $700 Dish 942 is a piece of junk. Thank you, tivo. I'm sure you really needed all that money anyway, great job helping the consumer. Believe me, I have plenty of contacts (2000+ clients) and word will be spread. "Don't get tivo, get replay tv". Way better product anyways, we sold our 30hr tivo years ago and kept our original 10hr replay tv. The tivo was just worthless- it crashed, it was slow, the replay tv was easier to use. Of course, the hdd in the replay has since been upgraded, and it's still going strong. We also have an LG HD pvr to take over for OTA broadcasts, and dish will just have to be put on D-VHS I guess. There's absolutely no way I'm switching to direct tv and their tivo-infected crap after this.
I work for a Dish Network/Echostar Regional Service Provider. I've been following this story for a while now and am very concerned about it. On the plus side though, Dish has said that it will not be turning any DVRs off as of yet. They have filed an emergency appeal and evidentally feel pretty confident about it (so much so that they told all their employees about it).
If MP3Licensing.com can list royalty rates for the most typical license deals, why can't TiVo?
The injunction has been blocked, at least temporarily.
Snippet
------------
Aug. 18, 2006, 1:13PM
Court Blocks Order to Turn Off Dish DVRs
By DAVID KOENIG AP Business Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
DALLAS -- A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked a trial judge's order that EchoStar Communications Corp., parent of the Dish satellite-TV service, disable more than 3 million digital video recorders.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If IBM sells or expects to sell a thousand times the units that a small business sells, then such a licensing scheme would be completely compatible with up-front pricing.
I doubt Tivo would have much legal standing in Canada. AFAIK, they've never shipped a single unit up here, and I doubt they ever bothered to file a patent in Canada. Before I got an Expressvu PVR, I e-mailed Tivo to ask if they had any plans to start selling products in Canada and they basically asked "where?"
The courts in Canada have a pretty low tolerance level for frivolous lawsuits. The only thing they hate more than that is being told what to do by Americans. If Tivo has any plans of appearing before a Canadian judge to take on Bell Canada (one of the largest and most powerful companies in the country), they had better make sure they've got a rock solid case, or they're gonna get their asses handed to 'em.
That leaves the technical question. I'm not sure who actually provides the software and programming services, if Expressvu handles that themselves or if they pay Echostar to do it. If it's done by Echostar, it's possible that they might decide to stop doing so. Hopefully Expressvu will have a solution for that in short order, or they're going to have a lot of extremely unhappy customers on their hands. Since there's no Tivo here, shutting off Expressvu PVRs would affect half the PVRs in the country (and probably more than that, I don't know anyone who has the Rogers version).
Surely more lykely to be Ti¥o?
Technically they couldn't have turned every one of their DVRs off. Dish has two services in regards to the DVR. Ones where you pay almost a rental fee for the service, and ones where you actually own the machine. Those who purchased higher end Dish DVRs, instead of getting them free as part of service) would technically own their machines. Customers could claim that their property was damaged by Dish Network for disabling said functionality in those systems.
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/aboutus/presski t/press/index.shtml
Oh well - looks like the 30 day thing has been delayed...
This was and is a commonplace idea, has been for years.
Yes, it has; I'd say probably six or seven years. However, the patent is nine years old.
It might have eventually become obvious when people realized that reasonable MPEG-2 encoding could be done in less time than the length of the clip, and that hard drive sizes were sufficient to handle this sort of application. If anything, though, TiVo was a little premature. Hard drives were too small for the idea to be worthwhile until around 2000.
I am so glad that I read /. occassionally! I was contemplating getting DISH network for our house because of the drastic price savings over the competitors. I had assumed that I could buy/build a Tivo/MythTV box and attach it to my DISH receiver. Now I learn that it isn't going to happen any time soon! Thanks /. for preventing me from making a big consumer mistake!
assert(expired(knowledge));
Patents and original research articles are two of the most essential areas of research when you are looking to innnovate in a technology space. As a tech consultant for 3 years I often spent time finding relevant patents, then going to university libraries to find and photocopy the research articles cited in the patents. These were bound together in reports with some analysis and review, and sold to our clients. It helped them define an envelope of legal and possible solutions to a given tech problem.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I hear you. Cable seems to have gotten it's act together a little better here too, so I'll likely be heading back. It would give me an excuse to setup MythTV, but I'd still rather have the original MPEG stream and I really don't need yet another Gentoo box to constantly maintain. I'll also miss the Sirius channels. I love em, but they ain't worth paying a separate $15/month ($5 or MAYBE even $10 is worth it).
I'll issue another "fuck tivo." My company is always trying to get me to file patents for the stuff I do but I'm just so disgusted with patent law that I want no part of it. Even when I stand to profit. True capitalism needs no laws to protect it.
Actually the two boxes are in different rooms, we bought our first TiVo about 3 1/2 years ago and the second in May. One is in the living room and one is in the bedroom.
As for the extra fee, we got the lifetime service plan on both units (sadly no longer available) so no monthly fee for us, as for the DishPVRs out there you pay a monthly fee for those.
Let's talk about those few features shall we:
All of the above are supported features available with a completely unhacked TiVo, there are a lot more choices if you are willing to hack your TiVo, most commonly used it a simple capacity upgrade by replacing the HDD with a bigger one or adding a second drive.
Finally as for the video quality, I tested that when we recently got a new TV, I'm running S-Video cables and I am unable to tell the difference between the feed directly off the Satellite box (bypassing the TiVo completely) and a TiVo program recorded on high quality. This is on a less than one year old 42" Samsung DLP TV. Now I don't doubt that there is a difference but it's not one that my eyes can discern.
Their PVR for instance couldn't even been told to record a show regardless of when it was on for instance. You had to tell it "start at this time and stop at this time". It was nothing more than old school VCR timed recordings. And forget about it getting related material automatically for you.
If Dish actually has to license Tivo's code maybe they will have a much better PVR as a result.
Chris
I agree Dish is good at brinksmanship. They've gone toe to toe with channels before and said "our customers may lose your channel, but you'll also lose our customers" (and the revenue that goes with them).
That works because the channel has those customers right now.
This is different. If Dish pulls that on TiVo, TiVo will simply respond "we don't have your customers (or their revenue) right now anyway, what exactly do we have to lose?"
I don't think this well-used Dish tactic will apply this time.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If they shut off my Dish DVR, they sure as heck aren't putting a TiVo on top of my tv... I have several TiVo's here, heck, I used to be involved in some of the hacking. Would I ever use them again? No. They kept changing their service model, and support model. I don't need some box telling me what it thinks i need to watch, for me, my DVR is simply a better VCR. I don't see how Dish has violated anything of TiVo's.. the SW is different, the HW is different, I think TiVo's just getting greedy because they're no longer innovating anything cool, and they want to monopolize the market... That's just my $.02 though
Coming from a paying customer using a Dish Network DVR, what is going to happen now? Will my DVR simply be disabled and my money kept?
Wonder if there's a way to keep my DVR from downloading updates...hmmm.
Hopefully they'll replace my DVR with a TiVo.
It now appears that the case continues on this, but what i am curious about is if this does eventually end the DVR service on Dish, will tivo then go after the dozens of other providers who are out there with their own PVR's?
how many comments did you apply this exact same response to?
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!