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Time Warner Cable Patents Method For Disabling Fast-Forward Function On DVRs

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-skip-for-you dept.

antdude writes in with a story about a patent that won't have DVR users skipping for joy. "Time Warner Cable has won a U.S. patent for a method for disabling fast-forward and other trick mode functions on digital video recorders. The patent, which lists Time Warner Cable principal architect Charles Hasek as the inventor, details how the nation's second largest cable MSO may be able prevent viewers from skipping TV commercials contained in programs stored on physical DVRs it deploys in subscriber homes, network-based DVRs and even recording devices subscribers purchase at retail outlets."

11 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Patent good in this case by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least the damage will be restricted to one company, albeit a major one.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Patent good in this case by durrr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For those who don't want to read technical details it can be summarized like this: Time Warner patents yet another "Method to create disincentives to honest buyers and drive people into piracy"

      I'm sure it will be a great sucess and useful as yet another argument why pirates kill their business.

    2. Re:Patent good in this case by skine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Their business is showing advertisements to as many people as possible.

      Entertainment is only the method they use.

    3. Re:Patent good in this case by sound+vision · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well no, their business isn't solely ads. They also collect subscription fees, so some of the money actually does come from people paying for entertainment.
      That being said ... it'd be interesting to find out what proportion of their money comes from subscribers, and what comes from advertisers.

    4. Re:Patent good in this case by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For those who don't want to read technical details it can be summarized like this: Time Warner patents yet another "Method to create disincentives to honest buyers and drive people into piracy"

      I'm sure it will be a great sucess and useful as yet another argument why pirates kill their business.

      Piracy is copying copyrighted content with the intent of making a profit. If one copies such content for their own pleasure but not profit, then it's just... copying. There is such a nice word for it, why not use it? Let me repeat: copying.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    5. Re:Patent good in this case by ormico · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can't help thinking this is beating a dead horse. Isn't it fair to say that the market is moving away from DVRs and towards streaming on demand.

      I used to have a Tivo. And then when I had Dish for a year, I had their DVR, but that was years ago. We dropped Cable TV and kept Cabled Internet. We watch everything we care about on Netflix or Amazon over our XBox or one one of our laptops.

      I know not everyone does that, but it seems to be the way things are headed.

      Making DVRs less useful is just going to drive that trend quicker.

  2. This is a great patent... by __Paul__ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and I'll make sure to avoid any device that lists it in its manual.

    --
    worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
  3. they missed a patent by fish+waffle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They forgot to patent "driving legitimate users to bittorrent through adding techniques designed to irritate paying customers".

    But I suppose there's lots of prior art there.

    1. Re:they missed a patent by Phrogman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, every move they make in this industry just seems to point out that a bittorrented version of whatever it is you are watching is preferable to the commercial product.
      When the industry gets it right - say with Netflix (or the new BBC app my wife is using on her iPad), people are perfectly willing to pay for the service. When they get it wrong with crap like this, people will not be willing to just bend over and take it.

      --
      "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
  4. Re:Next by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    already they have doubled rates (at some point, they were half, right?) and yet we still have crap on the networks.

    so, your theory is BS. no matter how much we'd pay, they would STILL want to dip further into ad money. movies were once ad-free and pay-tv was once ad-free. none of that is, anymore.

    I have zero hope in people Doing The Right Thing(tm) when it comes to us paying and getting ad-free services. so, I pirate, you pirate we all pirate. its what they have forced us to do. their fault. fully their fault for the war on eyeballs and eardrums.

    they want war? they'll have it. and they'll lose.

    btw, someone said there was a DEC logo here. I didn't see it, as it turned out I had many images blocked. I went to an 'unblocked' browser and was amazed at how BAD slash was when unfiltered. running firefox with noscript and adlock and a hefty filter list, I had totally forgotton how BAD the raw internet had become. and so, there is yet another proof that if there is an opp. the farking bastards will seize any free space and try to put an ad up there.

    no more commercial tv, no more dvd's that have not been ripped and edited, no more unfiltered ad-laden internet. they WILL NOT GET MY EYEBALLS. fuckers!

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  5. Re:in lay terms by pipedwho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As obvious it seems to be able to work around this, it still irks me that somehow this method was considered non-obvious and novel by the patent office and granted patent protection.

    The point of patents is theoretically to advance the state of the art. This type of patent is in no way clever, or anything that couldn't have been thought up by anyone working in that field (and by quite a few people not skilled in the field of video compression and transport). Yes, I agree that in detail it may not "have been done before" and thus not subject to prior art, but the "obviousness" clause is meant to protect the patent pool from accumulating with patents that do nothing but hinder progress. ie. If a patent doesn't provide useful non-obvious information (or information that wouldn't naturally be derived with a trivial amount of calculation or tinkering), then allowing it to be used to extort others that come up with a similar or the same concepts can only harm an industry as a whole.

    That being said, I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person on Slashdot who wouldn't celebrate any injunctory action taken by the holder of this particular patent. But, IMO, the patent should have never been granted in the first place. (Which is also true for far too many patents that are granted these days.)