"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler

They were using a video camera, zoomed up to his hands. That was why it failed when someone walked in the way, and why the conversation went: "It looks like he pressed "L".... "L" isn't even on that side of the keyboard!"

However, kudos for a Sneakers reference!! I wish they made more caper movies like that.

Rader
--Out of Hard Drive space again! 123 GB of MP3's

Just imagine the cash-flow associated with that kind of demographic information.

-*- Are you dumb? Do you quote yourself in your sig?

Please Note: Our privacy policy may change over time. In addition to posting any changes on our web site, www.tivo.com, we will provide or send a notice to each TiVo customer before any changes are implemented. You have our commitment that, regardless of any changes that might be made in the future, you will remain in complete control of your personal viewing information.

~ppppppppö

Don't want to pay that monthly fee and have a home computer with a large hard drive? Buy an ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON card. It does everything TiVo does but completely under your control without lifetime monthly fees.

Now here's an interesting thought. This post is, at the time I write this, at Score: 3 (Informative). If it had been posted by someone from ATI, though, would it have been at -1 (Troll) with a bunch of flames attached for violating Slashdot with blatant advertising?

Next question: how do we know that the poster isn't from ATI?

(I see someone from the UK's already done the "removes dirt and odours" gag :)

Does it support Linux?

TiVO is providing its customers with a useful service, and people react whining and throwing a fit just because TiVO's real-world policies don't fit in with certain ultra-libertarian ideals. Look, it's one thing to track information about your personal life. But setting up a targetted advertising scheme based on your TiVO viewing preferences isn't a crime -- hell, TiVO is doing you a favor. They could just throw random commercials on the screen like every other TV network; instead, they're trying to cater to each user individually.

Stop whining and give TiVO the respect they deserve for bringing new life to the dusty old idiot box.

What about new products? Say you're interested in buying science fiction books? Targeted advertising will let you know whenever new sci-fi books come on the market.
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Join other OS/2 users at Warpstock Europe, Karlsruhe, Germany Oct 13-15

I'm sure that if you thought about it, you'd find something market that interests you that you don't know everything about.
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I am a professional researcher. I think I am competent enough to figure out what I want for myself.

The 27 year old male who is reporting an income of $6,000 a year is spending an awful lot of time watching the financial channels, when all of our data says he should be watching professional wrestling and tractor truck pulls. We think the IRS might find this interesting.

Directed advertising is a good thing, (has anybody else sat through an annoyingly high level of feminine hygiene ads during the A-team and though 'boy, somebody's sure asleep at the wheel'?). But if that information is catalogued, stored and cross referenced in such a way that any agency can, through whatever channels find it out as it relates to a specific individual, then we could face potential problems.

Who said tampons and jobs are irrelevant? Lots of geeks need both...

sulli

Yes that's actually my domain name. Try it. No, it's not porn. It's just my personal site. I promise.

To mundanes, memory equals space. Just talk to the people who insist that they bought computers with 64GB ram and a 10 meg hard drive.

Maybe "64GB RAM" is still unreasonable (at work, we'll be getting a GHz Athlon soon with 0.5GB RAM), but a computer with a 10-meg HD wouldn't have been unheard of 10-15 years ago...:-)

(Smallest I've ever had was 20 megs in an IBM PC/XT, given to me a few years ago to add to my "collection." The first drive I bought was a 40-megger (and SCSI, too!), which was hooked at first to an Apple IIe. The computer I'm using to type this in has more than 6x that amount...of RAM! How times change...)

I suppose the combination of "64GB ram and a 10 meg hard drive" would be just a little bit unreasonable...

  _/_
 / v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
 \_^_/

--
"No ticket." - Silent Bob, Dogma

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Tired of corporate control? Try Nader. Sign the petition.

Personally I think we need to change hearts in this country. We need to tell the media and the government that we will not be told how to think, and that we will not be told that holding "politically incorrect" opinions is wrong. This is a free republic, for Pete's sake, and I am a free man.

-- Anonymous Coward

Aren't they always?

(Made fun of by a gay man with lesbian friends, some of whom work in inner city schools where the day-to-day language isn't BBC English and many of the folks are Islamic...)

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"No ticket." - Silent Bob, Dogma

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Their newest scheme is a combination of 'web-bugs' & cell-phones. Whenever I see one of the government's special transparent 1x1 GIFs my brainwaves register it as a special pattern which persists for several days. The cellphone's transmitter and antenna then act as an extremely short-range EEG to count the number and codes of the 'web-bugs' I've seen in the past few days. They transmit this to Carnivore-bugged phone switches using audio steganography whenever I recieve a 'wrong number' call.

/. is one of the goverments chief intelligence-gathering sourcesa. By tracking it's readership they can keep tabs of those who might discover their plots and..

gdfghfdh

hgfj

+++ CARRIER DISCONNECTED +++

You'll find hundreds WND stories on Y2K and every single one of them utterly alarmist.

WND also ran banner ads on many of these stories, offering sets of videotapes on y2k preparation - including some really survivalist nonsense - for hundreds of dollars. The videotapes and other survivalist nonsense were produced by... you guessed it, WND.
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I've always belived that the statistical data collected by the ratings players was deeply flawed, since the only people who participate do so by being paid money, as well as know their viewing habits can have a dramatic effect on the world of television.

"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."
falser

Nobody would ever look at your stats specifically and say "Wow, this fellow sure likes watching the Playboy Channel".

That would actually persuade me to vote for him. Makes him seem like a nice ordinary American who speaks his mind.

But his ideological views scare me, so I'm not going to vote for him, but that is beside the point.

Ah well, what the Constitution says is only relevant if the citizens know and care what it says. They don't on both counts.

Speculation has been that the primary purpose of this is to keep people from buying cheap TiVo units ($99 for a 14hour unit with rebates) and stripping them for parts.

The work-around to the locked drive involves moving the IDE connection from the TiVo to the PC with the drive powered up. Not for the faint of heart.

As to extracting the MPEG data, it's actively being worked on. To actually be useful, first we need some interface faster than the 115Kbps non-flow-control serial port on the TiVo.

I do not use Linux. Ever.

you mean like videotaping? but videotaping is legally considered "fair use", so you'd be wrong.

Now the crucial things to understand here are two. One, yes, that is well established fair use. Two, NO, it would not be legal under the DMCA. The DMCA attempts to circumvent fair use rights, by making it not the use which is illegal, but the act of bypassing any technological roadblock that's been thrown up to prevent the exercise of fair use rights. This is a direct result of the fact that rights belong to the general public, which is statistically ignorant and apathetic, while the privileges the DMCA seeks to exalt over our rights are cash cows for corporations with deep pockets and plenty of public officials already bought.

Do you think this is an outrage? Do you want to do something about it?

However, reading this little bit it occurs to me that it might not be as simple as you think. Tivo makes the machine and the encryption (is it actually encrypted?), but the copyright holders are the movie/TV studios and they have no particular agreements with Tivo. So, I still think the video stored in a Tivo might be considered "fair use" copies: walks like a VCR, quacks like a VCR, it is a VCR, not a CSSed DVD.

Of course, IANAL, but I throw it out there as a thought.

To tell you the absolute truth, I cant see how TIVO knowing what I watch, even if its tied to me by mention of my name or whatnot, can effect me in any way. I mean, on the net, I want privacy from corporations and individuals because its more personal information at stake (credit card information, visiting 'questionable' sites :). But when I'm watching TV, I WANT Them to know I skip over the sh*itty shows and watch others. Then I will be effecting what they play, and will, in a very small way, effect what they play.
I know a lot of you are saying that this will enable targeted advertisments, Good! at least I wont have to sit through tampon comercials!. And I can always walk out of the room for a snack, its not like targeted ads are more evil then non-targeted ads. and they will probably be limited to a banner anyway since tivo is a bit limited in video capabilities.
And the last argument to tracking what people watch that people often make, that it reveals something about that person to the mega-corporation-super-consperacy. They know that you watch SURVIVOR!! OOOH.
my point is there isn't too much incriminating content on TV, unlike the Internet. Because its so filtered and such a massive media, the only thing they will learn is that you watched the same thing as 500,000 other people that night.

To that, I say big deal. Privacy as an issue matters on the Internet, but I personally don't think it has much bearing on television viewing habits.

Hopefully my point is retained for those reading.

Proudly banned by Metallica on May 20, 2000.

Boom. You've just overpaid this "trusted friend" for your car.

Doncha think it's neat when your dentist says, "so, how's the bicycling..." Jeez, he really remembers you. What a guy... but he's simply written it all down from the last time. Think of it that way and suddenly there's this sleazy cynic with his hands in your mouth.

This is off the subject, but when I read this I thought of one thing: having Linux Open Source is of course great, but when implanted into a device like the Tivo, there is not much hacking to be done on the kernel. Sure, you could take the code and make your own device, but who has the time? Not to mention the $$ it would take to mass market such a product.

Would it be reasonable to make an optional extention to the GPL requiring all devices running Linux (or any other GPL'd software) to include instructions on how to extract and modify the source? I'm assuming the kernel in the Tivo is just a binary, so it would be more of a matter of replacing what's there. Do all devices run on generic CMOS or DSP chips that use the same technique to modify the memory on them?

It seems that it would be easy to store the kernel where no one would be able to modify it, thus rendering the OS code useless. Just a thought. Flame as is appropriate.

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"No ticket." - Silent Bob, Dogma

photozz writes: "Salon is running this Story about Tivo and their plans to track user viewing habits for targeted adds . It also explores their stance on the "hacking" of the Tivo for more memory."

Having said that, though, it is still better than 90% of the crap that is on the other channels.

In my opinion he just memorized a bunch of facts about history.

And what the fuck is wrong with that? This at least puts your roommate ahead of 90% of the clueless fucks out there. He should read a lot more so he will know when the TV documentaries are getting it wrong, but half a loaf is better than none.

If you don't want to share any information, it's simple: UNPLUG FROM THE NET. Obsessing about data sharing, especially when it's used for targeted and personalized content, is so 1995.

This compares with the :cue:cat. Both are the product of marketing genius.

Manufacturers would pay good money to find out who, buying their products, also bought other products so they could target them better.

I'm sure we all knew at some point it would come to this .. all in the name of convenience ..

TiVo is a more difficult issue, but the :cue:cat issue would be easily solved by creating an open database -- something like FreeDB, of the free CDDB project did.

just a suggestion

of course the other option is to sample the shows you think you might like instead of some tv appliance telling you that you might like that show .. *shrug* :)

From the article:

So maybe they just want more to watch. Is this generally the case; are people watching more TV as a result of TiVo?

Yes, people watch up to 30 percent more television when they have a TiVo. But their overall satisfaction increases. People watch a greater diversity of programs. I know from my standpoint, I used to only watch movies.

I find the exact opposite to be true - I watch about 90% less television with my TiVo than before. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. I only watch what I've told TiVo to record for me, which amounts to about 3 hours per week. Right now, since everything is in reruns, TiVo's just storing up a bunch of stuff I'll probably never look at; the TV's not been on since last Tuesday or so. Since I don't spend time channel-surfing, I watch almost no TV at all now.

2. When I zip through commercials, I don't stop for anything - no ads at all if I can help it. This includes ads for the upcoming NEW SHOWS!!! Since I don't get seduced by the new shows, and I'm not really interested in watching more just to become a "better" source of demographic information (a privilege for which I pay, no less!) my viewing habits remain, at best, flat. They're losing money on me, and there's fuck-all they can do about it. That makes me very happy.

The moment that TiVo-inserted ads become non-skippable, or I start getting targeted-phone calls, or targeted-junk mail, or (yikes, they HAVE my email address) spam, they'll be getting the box back.

Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...

---
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If you don't want even your anonymous viewing information (information that does not identify you or your household) used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll-free telephone number and it will not be.

Sounds like you can decide whether or not to participate.

Look, if you buy a Tivo, expect your viewing habits to be sold. Expect your personal data to be tied to them. The kind of highly-granular, personally-identifiable viewing data (down to what commercials are fast-forwarded) Tivo can collect is worth a hell of a lot more than the $10/month.

Of course, they'll generously guard your privacy now while building their installed-base (especially among tech-savvy, privacy-conscious early adopters), but once its popularity blooms beyond that market into the millions, expect an about face.

You may wail and moan and cancel your service at that point, but you'll never get the data you already gave them out of their systems, where it will be bought and sold and subpoenaed.

You will have no recourse.

-Isaac

-- My employer thinks my opinions are crap.

He posited a very Net-centric society with most everyone running very heavy filters to extract the data that interested them. Gerrold was obviously worried about this; the protagonist wrote a virus that would simply mess with people's filters a little. It would start letting in a worldview that they wouldn't ordinarily subscribe to. It was designed to shake them up a little without being overtly destructive. It helped keep people from going completely insular and stale.

I can see a couple of strong parallels here, and I don't think this has crossed very many people's minds. We already know about the obvious abuses: if they really knew what people watched, it would be fairly easy to determine a good chunk of the potentially-rebellious population simply by accessing their viewing records. Folks who watch a lot of TV Nation and Discovery Channel are not likely to be nearly as malleable as the Millionaire crowd.

Right, you knew that. But I think there's a more subtle danger here. In essence, by targeting you with personalized ads and, presumably, actual programs, aren't they able to manipulate your worldview to an astonishing degree? Wouldn't they be able to sort of bury you into a feedback loop? IE, if you are paranoid, feed you programs to fuel your paranoia and extract more money from you for bomb shelter supplies?

I don't think this is possible, I think this is INEVITABLE. They're going to do whatever they can to extract as much money from you as possible. Telling you the truth is not on the agenda. If lying to you extracts more cash from you, that is the right thing to do from the perspective of the stockholders.

Personally, I do NOT NOT NOT like the fact that ANYONE can control what I see but me. I'm unwilling to surrender that much of my choice. Admittedly there is already a great deal of manipulation going on in the media (if you don't think so, go read some foreign newspapers -- you'll be AMAZED at what you don't hear about here.) But TiVO is going from the subtle and indirect to the obvious and blatant.

I worry, as did Gerrold, about the feedback loops in self-referential reinforcing programs and behavior. That way leads to madness -- literally. As a culture we are already nuts, bonkers, crazy as loons. Individual people I know are almost always quite sane and reasonable, but in a group we believe in Life as Seen On Television, generally don't question what's on the tube. We cherish and embrace simulated homicide as light entertainment before dinner, and pay no attention whatsoever to state-sanctioned executions or the fact that we have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other First World country.

We're already nutty as fruitcakes, as a group. What are we going to do when they can control what we see directly? Do we go mad one by one instead?

David Brin wrote Earth, not David Gerrold.

David Gerrold did a very interesting science fiction book five or six years ago. It was called Earth, and concerned itself with reality 50 years in the future.

Earth is by David Brin , not Gerrold, and yes, it's an excellent book. A lot of the ideas in it were fleshed out into Brin's article and later book called The Transparent Society .

I used to be a card-carrying cypherpunk, but The Transparent Society convinced me that the crypto will never work, and that privacy cannot continue to exist. And that that's really not as bad as it sounds.

As we all know, WebTV is partially owned by M$. I have yet to confirm this (mostly because I don't know anyone moronic enough to use WebTV), but about a year ago someone told me that WebTV dials up M$ in the wee hours of the morning and uploads a log of every show watched and every site surfed. Isn't this orders of magnitude worse than the seemingly passive methods Tivo is using?

The problem, as always, isn't with using the information in the manner they claim they're going to use it. Do I care if I see an ad for a computer product, which I might buy, instead of a MagnetTherapySnakeOil Miracle Cure? Actually, yes, I'd rather not see ads for products which I have contempt for. The problem is the misuse of the data, which is not typically disclosed (we're going to use your data to threaten you if you get hurt in our store), and probably unplanned.

I don't doubt that there are marketers sitting around thinking how great targeted ads are. The problem is that in 5 years (or less) there'll be this big pile of data on what you've been doing for the last 5 years, and someone else will realize how useful that data is for...? I don't know what the use will be, but I know with fair certainty that once collected, you can't get the data back.

Yes sir, if I were working on an Embedded set-top box, with say, network connectivity and all sorts of spiffy features and a hard drive and... oh... wait...

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

It's suprising how strong the protections are. A specific court order is required to disclose video rental data. A search warrant isn't sufficient; the renter has to have the opportunity to contest the request before the info is disclosed to law enforcement. This is much stronger than the requirements for phone records, and stronger even than the requirements for wiretaps.

Why is it so strong? It's called the "Bork Bill", because it was enacted after somebody got the video rental records of Judge Robert Bork (the Republican moralist and author of "Slouching to Gomorrah") and revealed that he has some unusual video watching interests.

Whether what Tvio does involves is covered is a nice legal question. The original law is narrow, but one can argue by analogy that a new technology performing a comparable function is covered.

P.S. While you're at Radio Shack, you can get yourself a "wonderful" :Cue:Cat too. Don't give your real address, and do use the Linux software for it ;)

The initial setup call the TiVo makes dials a toll-free number, from there it downloads a list of your local numbers based on the zip code you enter as part of the setup.

I'm not suggesting that TiVo is using the information available from your call to the toll-free line, but it is available to them.

I do not use Linux. Ever.

They don't need to have your serial number in the filename. When your box calls in, it has to identify itself so that they know you're a subscriber, right? Unless it makes two separate calls each day (one identified to get program data, one anonymous to send viewing information), the server already knows who's sending the file.

Filenames are irrelevant. Caller ID is irrelevant. They've looked up your subscription information and can use it to tie everything related to that call back to you.

On a less parynoid note. This is not really anything new. Web site are doing this all over the place. Any data that they can get about you to figure out what you may or may not buy is used. Doubleclick does this just read there privacy statement. What is Tivo's privacy statement? Do they even have one? Maybe that is the question that you should be asking your self.

Personally, I think it would be better to just put a UPS on your VCR and go about things that way. Then you don't have these concerns, you don't get programs that you probably don't want. And guess what, it works!

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Yes, slashdot DOES hate my posts!

"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman