TiVo Selling Data on Users' Watching Habits

Gyppo writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that TiVo is collecting and selling data on what parts of broadcasts people are rewinding for review and what commercials they are skipping. The data collection is part of a service the company provides to advertisers and television networks, collecting anonymous data on their users' commercial-watching habits. The data they provide is a random subset of their overall userbase, detailing which commercials are skipped and which are actually watched. The article mentions the possibility for privacy abuse, but with this application of technology Tivo is not providing access to what any one individual user watches via the service."

Comments

Typo

[flyingfsck]

Typo: 'In Soviet America...' There, fixed for you.

Microsoft does the same thing with XBoxes

[unassimilatible]

and everyone here goes apeshit when Microsoft cracks down on Linux XBox hackers.

So I don't really own my Tivo box? That's interesting. So they can knock on my door and come in and take it? How many years do I have to pay for the service for my rights to vest? 1? 10? 100? Oh BTW, I still have the original box the Tivo came in, and there is not a damn thing on it that says that it won't work AT ALL without the service.

The reality is I don't give a shit what Tivo's business model is, since I am the end user and not a Tivo stockholder. I am concerned with my rights. A business model is not a protectible interest via copyright, as the Lexmark case makes clear.

Jesus, I cannot believe I am having this debate on /.