Because--let us remember that TiVo runs Linux--if the TiVo had an ethernet port, it'd probably be fairly straightforward to make the TiVo stream mpeg video out of said ethernet port, and onto whatever network happened to be connected thereto.
I speculate that this might, possibly, be a minor point of contention with broadcasters (which is to say, their heads would all explode and lawsuits would rain from the heavens like holy fire).
Having read the comments from Orrin Hatch that were posted here a few weeks ago, I have a sense now that the intent behind section 1201 may not really have been so evil.
He said that they were trying to create a safe legal environment in which music companies and such would feel comfortable with online distribution. I suspect, then, that the primary purpose of the paragraph about circumventing technological measures was to forbid people from bypassing password authentication on websites where music (and such) is published--but had nothing to do with over-the-counter "packaged" materials like DVDs, or people's right to decode and view them on whatever OS they wanted. I suspect the congresscritters who voted for it never thought about those implications, and wouldn't have written the law that way themselves. . . it's just that they got so many kind offers of assistance in writing the law from RIAA and MPAA lobbyists, and they had such busy campaign schedules.
The good news, then, is that if the court case goes the wrong way, it's not impossible that the next congress may take action to bring the law more in line with original intent.
It's even worse than that--they don't just recoup expenses from CD sales, no no, they recoup their expenses from the *artist's* share of the CD sales. In the end, after they've been paid back from the artist's royalties, it turns out that the artist is the one who's paid for the recording, the marketing, the tour expenses, but that the record company owns the master tapes. As if I took out a mortgage to buy a house, paid on the mortgage for 30 years, and then the bank owned the house... It's a disgusting business.
See this site for a good rant on the subject: It's from the website of the folk singer Richard Shindell, who decided not to renew his contract with one of the major labels and signed with a very small label instead. "Working for the major labels," he says, "is like working for McDonalds hoping to scrape up enough money for lottery tickets."
Has anyone responding to this thread actually read Natural Capitalism? So far, I've seen very little evidence of it.
Go on, folks, the whole book is posted at this site for FREE. Read it, and get some clue about what these guys are talking about before you start shooting your mouth off about how this is all radical greenie crap and they're just trying to take away our freedom.
The primary theme of the book is that it is more profitable to approach design in a manner that saves resources than it is to be wasteful. The only reason this needs to have a book written about it instead of being plain common sense is that for a long time, engineers have assumed that the law of diminishing returns can't be overcome; you spend money on efficiency, but eventually the energy and resources saved are no longer enough to pay you back for the money you spent.
But Hawkins and the Lovinses are trying to make the point that if you begin the design process with the goal of efficiency, you can end up saving money in areas you hadn't thought about before. E.g: Design a conventional house, and there's only a certain amount of insulation that it will be cost-effective to buy. But if you design a house with the intention to insulate it heavily, it turns out that you don't need to pay for as large a central heating or air conditioning system, and may not need to buy such a system at all--which saves you so much in capital outlay that your highly efficient house costs you far less than a modestly-insulated conventional house would have.
This is a very significant observation, extremely counterintuitive to most design professionals--as radical in its way as (dare I say it) the notion of commonly-maintained free software being less buggy, more reliable and more secure than software produced by major corporations.
This ain't a crypto-socialist naive Naderite threat to Our Way Of Life, folks. This book is clear-sighted, and very much worth reading.
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I speculate that this might, possibly, be a minor point of contention with broadcasters (which is to say, their heads would all explode and lawsuits would rain from the heavens like holy fire).
He said that they were trying to create a safe legal environment in which music companies and such would feel comfortable with online distribution. I suspect, then, that the primary purpose of the paragraph about circumventing technological measures was to forbid people from bypassing password authentication on websites where music (and such) is published--but had nothing to do with over-the-counter "packaged" materials like DVDs, or people's right to decode and view them on whatever OS they wanted. I suspect the congresscritters who voted for it never thought about those implications, and wouldn't have written the law that way themselves. . . it's just that they got so many kind offers of assistance in writing the law from RIAA and MPAA lobbyists, and they had such busy campaign schedules.
The good news, then, is that if the court case goes the wrong way, it's not impossible that the next congress may take action to bring the law more in line with original intent.
See this site for a good rant on the subject: It's from the website of the folk singer Richard Shindell, who decided not to renew his contract with one of the major labels and signed with a very small label instead. "Working for the major labels," he says, "is like working for McDonalds hoping to scrape up enough money for lottery tickets."
Go on, folks, the whole book is posted at this site for FREE. Read it, and get some clue about what these guys are talking about before you start shooting your mouth off about how this is all radical greenie crap and they're just trying to take away our freedom.
The primary theme of the book is that it is more profitable to approach design in a manner that saves resources than it is to be wasteful. The only reason this needs to have a book written about it instead of being plain common sense is that for a long time, engineers have assumed that the law of diminishing returns can't be overcome; you spend money on efficiency, but eventually the energy and resources saved are no longer enough to pay you back for the money you spent.
But Hawkins and the Lovinses are trying to make the point that if you begin the design process with the goal of efficiency, you can end up saving money in areas you hadn't thought about before. E.g: Design a conventional house, and there's only a certain amount of insulation that it will be cost-effective to buy. But if you design a house with the intention to insulate it heavily, it turns out that you don't need to pay for as large a central heating or air conditioning system, and may not need to buy such a system at all--which saves you so much in capital outlay that your highly efficient house costs you far less than a modestly-insulated conventional house would have.
This is a very significant observation, extremely counterintuitive to most design professionals--as radical in its way as (dare I say it) the notion of commonly-maintained free software being less buggy, more reliable and more secure than software produced by major corporations.
This ain't a crypto-socialist naive Naderite threat to Our Way Of Life, folks. This book is clear-sighted, and very much worth reading.