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Television Media

TV Networks Sue ReplayTV 378

Posted by michael from the unblinking-eye dept.
Robert Wilde writes: "Three major television networks have sued Sonicblue over the ReplayTV 4000 and asked the court to grant an injunction to prevent the sale of the device." Here's another blurb about the lawsuit. All you readers that predicted that Replay would get sued over this device, give yourselves a pat on the back.
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TV Networks Sue ReplayTV More

TV Networks Sue ReplayTV

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  • I'm not actually happy that something bad, such as this, can be so easily and accurately predicted.

  • Didn't the Supreme Court already decide that VCRs are legal [virtualrecordings.com]? Can any legal experts out there explain why this case is different?
    • I'm going to guess that it's because this is much more than a VCR, it is a means for avoiding the one thing that makes network television profitable: commercials.

      What I'm curious about is whether the networks would claim it is illegal for me to tape an episode of the X-files, hitting stop and record around the commercials. All this does is automate the process. I understand why the networks would really hate this device (lost revenue speak loudly), but I don't know if they'll be able to win in light of precedence.

      F-bacher
      • I'm going to guess that it's because this is much more than a VCR, it is a means for avoiding the one thing that makes network television profitable: commercials.

        You're right, of course, but here's the mind blowing thing: even without one of these nifty little commercial-skip features, hardly anyone watches commercials anyway. Seriously, commercials are mostly just for going to get a drink or using the bathroom. And even the ones you watch are not of much effect. If advertisers realized how useless TV ads were, they'd put all their money into product placement instead--which does seem to be pretty effective.

        The only difference between TV commercials and banner ads on the web is that by click-through analysis, advertisers can actually SEE how ineffective it is.

        • Can you back this up please (though I can't back up any of my claims I do know that I watch plenty of ads, and I am of the opinion that I watch less TV than most)? I am seriously curious. I for one believe that TV ads are extremely effective. Why do companies spend so much on advertising? Why are all the stops pulled for the Super Bowl ads? Do you think companies haven't done research on the effectivines of TV advertising?

          Yeah, you might go to the bathroom or flip around during commercials, but you'll probably catch at least the first or last commercial in the set. While flipping around you're bound to come across some commercials.

          I know as a child I saw certain toys on TV and then wanted them dearly. I know as an adult I am subtly influenced to believe that products advertised on TV are somehow higher quality than generic products.

          I don't think anyone's arguing about the effectiveness of ads that are watched though, only if they are watched at all. I believe plenty of ads are watched. One doesn't have to devote full attention to an ad to get its message anyway, the purpose of many ads being repetition for product recognition.

  • dejavu (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rwaldin ( 318317 )

    This is so similar to the RIAA injunction against Diamond for the RIO MP3 player [slashdot.org]. It should turn out about the same I would imagine:

    The lawsuit will add a lot of legal fees to the cost of development, artificially driving up the retail price. Meanwhile, the networks will desperately look for ways to protect their content against fair use by consumers!

    What a scam!

  • Unless replay is going to keep some kind of centralized database of who is transmitting what to whom, it would be very hard to enforce a fifteen retansmit limit if a bunch of reasonably competent hackers decided to break it. In any protection scenario, you've got to have some trusted element in the equation. If you're putting the hardware into the hands of the public, it can't be considered trusted. Since users A and B can't be trusted, you would need some kind of an intermediary trusted element, like a decryption key server, to make sure shows couldn't be pirated.

  • Difference Between Music and TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pidge ( 160537 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:46PM (#2505446)
    The problem for the TV Networks' arguments is that music and TV are totally different mediums. With music I can go down the music store and buy a CD of my favourite group. With, TV the only time I can watch my favourite show is when it is broadcast. Of course, many popular TV shows are now on video, but this is usually well after the show is first aired.

    Music is something people generally listen to over and over again. A favourite song might be played 100 times by a person. On the other hand, a single episode of favourite TV show will generally only be watched once or twice. Even die hard Star Wars fans have probably only seen the movie a couple of hundred times!

    TV has always been free. The networks have an explicit agreement with producers to show advertising. They have no such agreement with TV consumers to actually watch them. If the Networks say this sort of technology will cost them money, well their business model is wrong.

    • ...the one where Grandpa Simpson is complaining about how young kids keep trying to get something free for doing nothing. He then walks into the Social Security office and scremes to the clerk, "Gimme Gimme Gimme!"

      Here's the deal. You want to get TV for free, you have to pay the price. I'm not talking about the cost of your cable bill here folks...very little of that actually goes to ABC or CBS. That money is for the cost of operations with your TV company. That's why Showtime, HBC, etc. charge money for their channels, since they don't show nearly as many advertisements during their programming. That price is commercials.

      Sure, you're have every right to skip over the advertising if you want (now that it's almost instantly possible to do so). Yet what happens when advertising executives realize that no one is watching their adds anymore? They're going to pull funding from you favorite TV channels. Then how are CBS, ABC, FOX, ... going to fund their businesses? One of two options...either they aren't, or they are going to move the commercials directly into the TV programming, just like they have already with football and the World Series.

      If you think the business model is wrong, then you are right. They will have to change it. But don't go crying to me when they stick ad promos even further into your face, because that is the only way that they can get money without charging you a dime.
      • No, what they really need to do is get better programming. When a show is good enough, most people won't record and watch later. Think about it: these toys don't give us anything we haven't had before, they just make it easier. However when a program is something people really want to see, they'll watch it right then, and not record it for later. People aren't going to wait till later to see what happens in Survivor just so they don't have to watch ads, they want to see it NOW. This technology changes nothing, it just means that the netowrks are going to have to work harder at making people want to wathc their shows (by making more entertaining shows).
        • When a show is good enough, most people won't record and watch later.

          Heh, sure they will. You miss the main point of hte PVR (ReplayTV, TiVo, UTV, DISHPlayer). If I start watching a 8:00 show at 8:15 I can skip all the commercials and finish up right about 9:00. I can choose to read a book, debug some code, or watch a half hour TV show (skipping the half that is commercials) and finish up at the same time you do.

          Why would I possibly want to start watching at 8:00?

          The only way to get me watch commercials is to make more good ones. I watch those. If I'm not in a hurry. And I notice them at 60x (or they start the block).

      • Do ads really work? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jswitte ( 216975 )
        > advertising executives realize that no one is watching their adds anymore?

        Who's to say that people are watching their ads now?! I think most gen-X-Y-ers probably screen out 90% of the advirtising they see on TV. They go and heat up their pizza, or get a pop, or go to the watercloset, or whatever. Now maybe that 10% is important, but as I see it, the only really useful thing about ads is to let you know a place exists. That rules out about 60% of the ads on TV these days (Walmart, Sears, the major Pizza places [donatos is a toss up as to whether it's major yet..], DQ) And people who buy a lot of stuff and eat out will continue to do so, whether or not they see a lot of ads, and people who are generally miserly with their disposable income (we spend it on $3000 computers instead) will continue to do so, even if subjected to a barage of ads (unless they are computer ads, maybe not even then).

        I sometimes wonder what would happen to consumer spending, both in volume and in distribution, if everyone stopped running ads for a week. I don't think much would change. Those of us who like pizza know where we like to get it from, those of us who like to get groceries (anyone?) know where we like to go to get them.

        There is the argument that "ads target the young and impressionable" who I suppose don't know about these places. Ah yes, some ad-agency paradise - where the ONLY source of information for those impressionable young'uns is TV - no friends, no billboards on the highway, no magazines, and God forbid, no parents to get in the way of the 'tube's influence..

        There has been at least one documentary (Frontline I think it was) a few years back about the Neilson ratings and how they basically don't work. People don't log themselves with the system correctly or consistantly, channel flipping behavior is sketchy, and they can't tell if the person is watching the ad, or getting a coke. They hinted about people trying to come up with totally passive sensing devices - laser scanners that will tell whose in the room, etc. The program ended with a judgement that whether or not Neilson's work well, they are some form of "currency" that networks and ad agencies can use to judge shows. I think as long as people continue to buy stuff (which I think they will with or without ads), the ad agencies don't really care that much about how accurate the Neilson's really are.

        But as I'm not an ad-executive, and I'd love to hear from someone who is.

      • Heh, looks like the public networks are the only ones with the "right" business model. Since they're also the only stations I bother to watch, and especially since I am already donating to my public radio and TV stations, I'm plenty happy to watch the commercial networks go down the tubes.

        -Paul Komarek
      • The business model is wrong, and it's always been wrong. It's been wrong not for the networks, which have traditionally been hugely profitable, it's been wrong for the public interest. The public has given use of the public airwaves to television companies almost for free, asking for useful, interesting, educational content in return. The networks instead have given us hypnotic junk in return, junk intended not to educate but to manipulate people into buying stuff. And anybody who thinks that the programs that the networks show are actually what people want (often making some kind of "market forces" argument) is kidding himself.

        In my opinion, the public airwaves should be given only to not-for-profits, with a mix of public funding, fees, donations, and simple sponsorships. Then we wouldn't have to worry about "skipping commercials", and the content we get would be of higher quality.

      • Re:This reminds me of the one Simpsons' scene... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @05:28AM (#2506226)
        Yet what happens when advertising executives realize that no one is watching their adds anymore? They're going to pull funding from you favorite TV channels.

        A good business will find a way to adapt to the times. If the networks can't survive with widespread commercial skipping -- I don't care. Their profit is not our responsibility. If they go away, something else will turn up.

        I would go so far to say that the networks are in fact "the enemy" for trying to stop the development of innovative products with their silly lawsuits. Our civil rights can be curtailed not only by the government, but by these kind of activities. If you can't get a law passed, pull the wool over a dumb judge's eyes to get your way...

        Ack. When did everything start to suck so much?

        I just hope that when Sonic|Blue loses they don't have to take the 30 sec skip button away from my current RTV unit.

        (Yes, that's a pipe character in the name, that's how it is in their logo. Ridiculous, but not as bad as :CueCat.)
        • A good business will find a way to adapt to the times. If the networks can't survive with widespread commercial skipping -- I don't care.

          Remember that these people are "publishers", viewers generally don't much care who broadcasts programmes, so long as they can watch them.
          But publisher-middlemen, be thay in film/TV/music/etc often have an overinflated view of their own importance.
    • The networks have an explicit agreement with producers to show advertising. They have no such agreement with TV consumers to actually watch them. If the Networks say this sort of technology will cost them money, well their business model is wrong.

      Which in the end is capitalism. The basic assumption being that both producers and consumers will attempt to seek the best "deal" for themselves.

  • Some TVs have more fun... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill.sheehan ( 93856 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:48PM (#2505451) Homepage
    As the happy owner of a Replay TV, I can tell you that it has changed TV forever. Prime Time is whenever I sit down in front of the couch. I regularly watch two or more episodes of a program in a row. Episodic programs are much more interesting when they can be viewed back-to-back rather than week-to-week. I'm addicted to the pause and rewind features. Phone rings in the middle of West Wing? No problem - I don't miss a sentence.

    One of the big complaints is that I get to skip commercials. Do I? You damn betcha! I don't waste a moment on cheesy ads pushing depilatories, cleansers not available in stores (or in states with active consumer fraud statutes, I suspect), and Slim Whitman retrospectives. However, I DO stop and watch ads that are either funny (Amstel Lite, for example), or are for something in which I'm interested.

    As for sharing recorded programs across the Internet, it should be noted that this feature is for sharing programs with other Replay 4000 owners. I'm sure it will be able to be hacked, but how does it differ from sharing my Babylon 5 tapes with unfortunate friends who don't have cable?

    I hope Sonic Blue is able to vigorously defend these suits. I'm sick to the teeth of network executives who want to control what, when, and how I watch.

    For more on this phenomenon, check out the last section of Michael Lewis' book, Next.

    And now for a word from our sponsor...
    • How does it [sharing recorded programs across the Internet] differ from sharing my Babylon 5 tapes with unfortunate friends who don't have cable?

      It doesn't - and the saddest part is that the MPAA and its ilk are convincing Congress that you are criminal for doing this.

  • This is total BS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dachshund ( 300733 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:48PM (#2505452)
    So they have a "commercial advance" button. What if they didn't? Would it not be copyright infringement then?

    I don't see them suing Tivo, a company that NBC owns a big stake in. Why? Because they don't have this one silly button? I can understand why this product might be seen as a threat by the networks... What I don't understand is their legal case for copyright infringement. Why the heck does the ability to skip forward 30 seconds make the difference between an "un-infringing" product and an infringing one?

    The networks are picking on a weak, underfunded company that doesn't have the resources to fight them. What makes it even dirtier is that one of the plaintiffs has a financial stake in that company's direct competitor.

    • TiVo does have a back door to get 30sec skip. Also, you can fast forward and when you start to see the show you hit play and it jumps back just enough to not miss the show. I find this much better then 30sec skip since you won't skip into the show.



      I think they have more of a problem with the fact that you can share shows over the internet.


      • ReplayTV has a FFW control that works the same way as Tivo, it backs up a bit when you hit Play. How much it backs up depends on how fast you were going.

        It *also* has a dedicated 30-sec skip button. In addition, if you push a number and then the skip button, it jumps that many minutes ahead. For some of my shows with regular-sized breaks, I can do 3-skip and boom, I'm back in the action.

        RTV and Tivo are both cool. Each does a few things better than the other. But I would give the nod to Replay for transport controls based on what I know.

    • Re:This is total BS (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tyger ( 126248 )
      That part of the lawsuit has nothing to do with the 30 second skip button. The new ReplayTV 4000 box actually has an option to completely skip commercials, automatically. Similar to those VCRs with commercial auto-skip, except you just don't see the commercial. One minute, it is a break, and the next moment, the break is over. If you are not paying attention, you may not even realize the commercial was there. You don't even get the fleeting glimpse of the product like you do with fast-forward or a skip button. THAT is what they are worried about.

      But that is also not the strongest part of this, IMO. I suspect the bigger part will be the ability to share recorded shows.
      • The new ReplayTV 4000 box actually has an option to completely skip commercials, automatically.

        How can it detect commercials? Does TV station send description stream with video and sound telling "The Simpsons, season 7, episode 3, part 2 of 2, currently running 12:17 min of 22:02 min" and "Commercials, currently running 1:05 min of 3:15 min"? And then they blame us for using devices to rip of commercials?

        In Finland, where I live, stations send PDC signal that tells VCRs when show is delayed and recoding is automatically delayed correctly. It also tells if show is running late and recording time is fixed accordingly. Commercial channels tell that "the show starts now" when actually the ads before it start and again tell that "the show ends now" after last ad after the show is over. When show is interrupted by ad the signal tells the show is still running.

        Of course you can still try analyze images and stuff to recognize ads automatically but you need pretty much computing power for stuff like that and it's not bullet proof.

        • Re:This is total BS (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Tiroth ( 95112 )
          Granted this may no longer be true, but I remember a Radio Electronics magazine from 10 years ago or better that had a project to modify your TV so that it would detect a signal in the feed and turn down the volume during commercials. (during commercials, not dynamic range compression)

          This project wasn't exactly super-expensive high-tech. I'm not sure if it is still possible since Commercial Advance VCRs seem to detect commercial fade-in/fade-out, which is more complex; if it is though, it is a fairly easy way to do reliable detection.

    • So they have a "commercial advance" button. What if they didn't? Would it not be copyright infringement then?

      It would not be copyright infringement, under the holding of the Sony Betamax case. There, the Court held that time-shifting of a VCR does not give rise to copyright infringement liability for the manufacturer of the VCR because the end-user's time-shift is fair use. Even if some users might use the VCR to copy commercial videos or otherwise engage in copyright infringement, the substantial noninfringing use of time-shifting gets the manufacturer off the hook.

      But the fair use factors include the impact on a marketplace. Time-shifting was blessed under 17 U.S.C. s. 107 (factor 4), because it actually involved an increase in commercial viewing.

      Not so with replayTV's commercial advance. Or so the argument goes.

      Without passing on the question, the studios certainly have a case to make. Without commercial advance, there would be slam-dunk Supreme Court authority in support of the defendant. With it, the Sony case is arguably distinguishable.
    • So they have a "commercial advance" button. What if they didn't? Would it not be copyright infringement then?

      It would not be copyright infringement, under the holding of the Supreme Court Sony Betamax case. There, the Court held that time-shifting of a VCR does not give rise to copyright infringement liability for the manufacturer of the VCR because the end-user's time-shift is fair use. Even if some users might use the VCR to copy commercial videos or otherwise engage in copyright infringement, the substantial noninfringing use of time-shifting gets the manufacturer off the hook.

      But the fair use factors include the impact on a marketplace. Time-shifting was blessed under 17 U.S.C. s. 107 (factor 4), because it actually involved an increase in commercial viewing.

      Not so with replayTV's commercial advance. Or so the argument goes.

      Without passing on the question, the studios certainly have a case to make. Without commercial advance, there would be slam-dunk Supreme Court authority in support of the defendant. With it, the Sony case is arguably distinguishable.

  • Just two weeks after winning an Emmy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by DaoudaW ( 533025 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:48PM (#2505454)
    How ironic that it only took two weeks after SonicBlue won a Technological/Engineering Emmy Award for the Advancement of Television for the big boys to crackdown on them. Too bad we still have media people wanting to control information rather than letting it free.

  • So when....... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by no_nicks_available ( 463299 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:50PM (#2505460)
    is this type of lawsuit going to happen to the "pop-up" killers and ad blockers that proliferate the internet today? It will happen.

  • Lawsuits as tactical weapon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nygard ( 3896 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @10:53PM (#2505471) Homepage
    This is not really intended to shut SONICblue down. As the article states, the defendants and the plaintiffs are also negotiating a business deal. This lawsuit is nothing more than a pressure tactic designed to get a more favorable deal.

  • If you don't like seeing the media companies taking this sort of action, there's only one thing for you to do:

    CONTACT YOUR GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE!

    That's right, get off your behind, write a letter, make a phone call, take a drive, fire off an email. DO SOMETHING!!!

    And after you've contacted your representatives, tell a friend. Tell several friends. Write to a newspaper. Get the word out.
    • And then I'll tell them I won't give them any more money if they don't listen to me. Lets see, I gave my party $100 this year. Lets see... The RIAA gave my party about 50 grand this year. Disney gave my party about 140 grand this year.The MPAA was relatively cheap and only gave them about 20 grand this year. Hmm. I wonder who they would possibly listen to... (Statistics thanks to opensecrets.org here. [opensecrets.org])
      • The cash organizations pay to parties and politicians is really token. It's the non-cash that really hooks the pols. Paid vacations, speaking fees, lavish presents, parties. How we should measure the influence of MPAA on our pols is not by their cash contributions, but by their expenditures on lobbyists.

        Back to the point, this lawsuit is the establishment pissing in the wind again. No matter what lawsuits are filed, and what legislation passed, someone will find the technological means to "liberate" content.

        What's unfortunate about this is that in the future, content will become heavy with embedded advertisements to compensate for our new consumption habits, such as avoidance of commercials and non-prime-time viewing. After legal and technological means fail the establishment (and they will), we'll begin to see many more ads projected onto football pitches, more closeups of nikes in reality tv, and more mentions of specific brands in sitcoms.

        As the Accenture commercials say - "Now it gets interesting."
    • They won't read it... Your letter doesn't have a fat bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contribution in it, and besides, it's probably got anthrax, too...
    • Okay, you're karma whoring.

      This is a _court case_. Your judges aren't elected. They don't run campaigns. They get life tenure. There is absolutely, positively nothing at all writing your representitives will do in this case. Your representitives can't do much of anything when the judge says that the Television execs are right. About your only hope in this case is to donate money to ReplayTV. Your congress person has nothing to do with this at this point.

      The law is on the books. They can't go back an retroactively change the law just so the television networks lose. That'd be unconstitutional as an ex post facto law.

      People, the time for writing your congressmen is long before the lawsuits start. You should not mod up people who say to write congressmen when its in the court room. You shouldn't even post "write your congressmen" messages in places like this. It doesn't do anything at all.
        • Your judges aren't elected. They don't run campaigns. They get life tenure

        And let's say I disagree with that system. What would I do about it? Oh, wait, I'd write to my elected representatives.

        • People, the time for writing your congressmen is long before the lawsuits start

        Sure, because there's no point in changing the law to prevent further abusive lawsuits against similar products in the future, right?

        • You shouldn't even post "write your congressmen" messages in places like this. It doesn't do anything at all.

        It does seem fairly effective at flushing out the apathetic whingers who take some wierd kind of smug pleasure in saying "There's nothing you can do under the current system, so do nothing."

  • Article also at news.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @11:30PM (#2505562) Homepage
    For those without nytimes account: news.com [cnet.com]

  • Ads are a gamble, not a guarantee. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @11:33PM (#2505572) Journal
    It seems to me that media and advertising companies want to take some of the risk out of their business by forcing us to watch ads.


    People have been skipping ads, not only via VCRs, Tivos, and other timeshifting devices, but by flipping channels and leaving, for years.
    I thought it was an accepted fact that advertisers are gambling that you will see an ad, and that the ad will have an effect on your buying patterns.


    What next, will media corporations sue us if we don't buy advertiser's products?

    • What next, will media corporations sue us if we don't buy advertiser's products?
      A damn good question. I no longer believe paid advertisements. None of them. If it's a paid ad then I consider it to be at best a lie and at worst fraud. Should I expect a nastygram from some legal team or other for expressing this opinion? Or rather, should advertisers seek to understand this shift in public opinion? Ads don't work nearly as well as they did when everyone believed any old crap that was broadcast or printed. Now we've all been screwed by some dodgy bit of copy or another and we simply aren't interested anymore. Sure, there's still the odd rube too clueless to see through the latest scam, but there's an increasing number of aware people more than ready to fight the good fight.

      Dear Companies - make better products that actually do what people want and stop relying on marketing to sell your crap. Word of mouth will save you a fortune.

  • Crossing fingers, expecting no injunction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @11:43PM (#2505601) Homepage
    In order for a judge to instate an injunction, the plantiffs have to provide evidence that:

    1) The likely ruling will be in favor of the plantiffs. Given the historical precedent of the VCR lawsuit this seems unlikely.

    2) The injunctive relief is necessary to prevent some sort of serious damage to the plantiffs. In this case, they can't really proove that they would suffer any consequences so immediate as to require such a remedy.

    So if they get a judge with their head screwed on straight I think Sonicblue will be okay. Of course I've seen a lot of insane judgements lately on these sorts of issues. So, I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed.
    • 2) The injunctive relief is necessary to prevent some sort of serious damage to the plantiffs.

      But just damage isn't enough, it has to be damage caused by something that is actually ILLEGAL, right? Otherwise the horse and buggy company could get an injunction against the car comapny for having a superior product.

      To me, this is sort of like that. The networks will just have to adapt to a new way of doing things.

      Oh, no, wait, they will just have to file suits and injunctions and get their way in the end -- I was being an idealist, silly me!
      • Otherwise the horse and buggy company could get an injunction against the car comapny for having a superior product.
        As I recall, they pretty much did. There were some horrible, absolutely horrible, laws about stupid things horseless carriage drivers had to do, put in place by those who didn't want to see the old guard industries put out.

  • TV broadcast priviledge (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Wednesday October 31, 2001 @11:44PM (#2505603)
    Televisions network execs clearly forgot that braodcast television is a priviledge provided them by the people via the government. Their broadcast spectrum is not a right, it is a priviledge granted on the condition that the broadcaster will add some value to it. Ditto for cable television: cable plants are mainly installed (in the US) in cities where the government protects, licenses, and regulates the natural monopoly.

    Which bring me to my next point: if a television network is going to beam this shit into my home via a publically regulated electromagnetic spectrum, where do they get off telling me what I can do with the signal?

  • I think the TV networks can learn from the music industry's strategy. If you don't want people to copy your content willy-nilly, provide a legit way for them to get it how they want, when they want. The music industry's version of this is MusicNet and PressPlay; they same principle applied to TV would be video-on-demand for everything. Obviously people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to time-shift TV and skip commercials, but none of that money is going to the networks. Commercial-free VOD could potentially give viewers and networks what they want.
  • ... and those of you who were really wrong [slashdot.org], slap yourselves in the face.

  • But in a way so shops can re-enable them.

    Just like the way virtually every DVD player sold in Oz has been modified to be multiregion compatible.

    They could just have a couple of little holes in the back that line up with some internal screw switches on the board.
  • Ya know, I've been thinking about this for a long time... is there a mechanism to protect copyright yet still respect fair use rights? What characteristics would such a mechanism have? Could some aspect of the dreaded SSSCA actually be beneficial here?

    I certainly don't have all the answers, but I do have a few observations:

    For copyright protection to be effective, content must remain encrypted from receipt by the consumer, to display by the device. Of course at some point it is available (i.e it can be seen and/or heard), but presumably, the cost of equipment to digitally capture such content at a sufficient resolution to threaten master redistribution would be prohibitive for the consumer.

    Of course, storing such content is not a problem, if it can only be played back on a restricted set of devices, i.e. content custom-encrypted for each and every consumer. Of course this raises three questions: 1) How can such encryption be done effectively, especially for broadcast or multicast delivery? 2) How do you deal with playback equipment that breaks down, or with vendors that go out of business and so can't "clone" decryptors in such equipment when it breaks. 3) How do you permit multiple playback devices with the same key for convenience within a single household?

    Question 1 can be addressed thus: broadcast and multicast content is encrypted with a public key that matches a common private key in all receivers. Yes, this is a weak link, but the receiver need not be a display device -- content would still have to be uniquely encrypted for a particular display device (more on this later). Furthermore, most broadcast content is likely time-sensitive -- it's value diminishes with age. Of course, hacking such a receiver to expose the private key would attract strong SSSCA-like sanctions. Non-broadcast content could be encrypted at source with a public key provided by the consumer at time of purchase, presumably via automated electronic means. It is important, however, that the corresponding private key not be known by the consumer, lest unencrypted versions of the content become available to her. Appropriate signing, by an authority the content provider recognizes, of the public key provided by the consumer (from his equipment) alleviates this.

    Question 2 is easily addressed. Clearly each piece of playback equipment has, within it, a decryption module that is (a) sealed and relatively impervious to attack, (b) contains a unique private key. The relevent external connections to this module are encrypted content input and analog decrypted content output. Such modules will be generally customized for each type of equipment. Of course this raises the question of what do you do if the playback equipment, with a unique key fails, and the manufacturer goes out of business (and so can't clone a decrypter module).

    This brings us to question 3. Clearly, there is a conflict between uniquely keyed playback equipment, singly-keyed broadcast receivers, and the consumer's desired storage and transport of content around the home. Enter the "transcrypter".

    A transcripter is a piece of equipment designed to take content encrypted with its public key, decrypt it internally, and reencrypt it with the public key of another piece of equipment. Placing a transcrypter ahead of any playback device will thus effectively alter it's public key. Transcrypters also have the property that, although manufactured with a unique key, can be cloned to the key of another transcripter (perhaps some limited number of times), thus permitinng several playback devices to share a common key. Of course, when cloning a transcrypter, they have to authenticate eachother to ensure that the public keys correspond to private keys that are "secure" within the transcrypter. Furthermore, while transcrypters should be relatively inexpensive devices, their price should deter distribution of many numbers of cloned transcrypters with encrypted content. Authentication of transcrypters with eachother can be simply a case of detecting public keys signed by an approprliate authority known to the hardware. Hacking a transcrypter, of course, would attract SSSCA-like sanctions.

    Transcrypters would allow custom encryption of received content to a common public key used by the consumer, and perhaps, registered with some authority. Receivers would have built-in transcrypters to output content encrypted with this common consumer's public key. Playback devices would have transcrypters to reverse the process. Content encrypted at the source for a consumer would be encrypted with the common public key for all the consumer's transcrypters.

    The issue of signing authorities, is, of course, a tricky one politically, however, it is not unreasonable for a piece of equipment to identify peer equipment certified by a common industry body, or its own manufacturer.

    More problematic of course, is the registration or at least the signing of a consumer's common public key -- clearly the consumer can't generate the public/private key pair lest they get access to unencrypted content. If a third party (say a transcrypter manufacturer) generates the keypair and signs the public key, they can impersonate the consumer, generate lots of cloned transcrypters, and incriminate the consumer as a content pirate. One solution is to have the transcrypter generate the keypair itself, and trust an external authority for signing the public key. It should be possible to do this in a manner where the transcrypter can be trusted to not disclose the private key to anyone. For example, the transcrypter can allow for arbitrary code execution, particularly to access it's external interfaces, with hard-coded internal transcryption routines and key generators that remain private. This would allow open source networking code to be run on it that could be audited.

    Of course, these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm open to a critical analysis, and realize that the hackability of such devices (receivers, playback devices, and especially transcrypters) is probably the weakest link. However, I'd much rather see SSSCA-type laws applied to a small set of devices and a much broader set (like general-purpose computers), and this may bne one way to do this and still respect fair use.


    • How does limiting the devices with which you may "share" to a few specific machines within the home facilitate fair use? Replay's ability to share across the internet suggests that Replay's definition of "fair use" includes the ability of limited sharing with immediate friends, even if only somewhet distant "net" friends. Transcryption to a handful of specific keys does not allow that, nor do I know of any other definition of fair use that limits it to a locus like "the home" or any other limiter of that sort.

      • Fair question. First, when I refer to "fair use", I'm thinking in terms of the Copyright Act. This permits making a reasonable number of archival copies and/or modest sized extracts for dscussion, critique, etc.

        It strikes me that permiting unlimited copying for storage solves the archival problem, all you need to ensure is that you do not lose the playback private key, so have multiple keys made/available. In terms of specific numbers, I was thinking not in terms of one or two, but potentially dozens or even hundreds, but certainly not tens of thousands.

        Extraction for critique is an issue that I didn't address, though. Clearly extraction of lower resolution content shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes extraction of full resolution content is necessary -- for example if critiquing a compression technology and illustrating visible artifacts. In such cases, it may be possible for the playback device to limit how much of such extraction is possible. Certainly a daily/weekly limit on use of such a function would not be unreasonable. But, you want to prevent 1000 people from extracting 1/1000th of a movie and reassembling it, for example, and ANY full-resolution extraction mechanism would suffer this flaw. Perhaps a "pay for excerpt" mechanism would work, but that does not satisfy fair use, IMHO.

        Oh, and with transcrypters shared temporarily with friends, yeah, you could take the movie (for example) to a friend's house and share that way.

    • Ya know, I've been thinking about this for a long time... is there a mechanism to protect copyright yet still respect fair use rights?

      Isn't that exactly what we had for a couple of hundred years, before all these weird new laws were purchased?

      • Yes, of course, but that mechanism relied heavily on the difficulty of implementing certain types of circumvention, en masse. Even "bring your own" paper to the photocopier was more hassle than "supply your own bandwidth" to my server.

        I very much desire a technical solution to help enforce traditional fair use principles. Lacking one, we will see technical solutions that are far too blunt.

  • This is stupid. People bypass commercials all the time with their VCRs. Now the networks are mad because people think highly enough of their TV shows to show a friend? This is the same thing as saying "This is a good show, here's the tape" Plus you can only distribute a show 15 times.

    Besides, if you want to download practically any show on TV, go to efnet or something.

    Troy
  • I guess they should also sue GE and American Standard, since my fridge and toilet also make me miss commercials.

    If miss commercials, it does nothing to affect the incoming that a network has made selling that time. True - if a majority of viewers started using these and skipping commercials, then the value of that time goes way down, but we are nowhere near that point, and by the time it gets there, I'm sure there will be another revenue stream in place.

    As for the sharing thing - how stupid are they? First off - I don't really understand how they can get so paranoid over something they are BROADCASTING - we're giving it away, but no one else can. (Simplistic - hell yes).

    So anyway, I tape a show cause I'm out doing something and miss it when it is on. So, that lets me become a loyal viewer, so I am more likely to tune in when it is on next time.

    So, someone else misses it so I send it to them. Same thing - viewer recruitment.

    They should be embracing the fact that it is helping people see their shows they may miss and creating a stronger, more loyal viewiership.

    As for the commercial thing - the people skipping the commercials would probably have done the same thing with video tape or just left the room anyway.

    Guess I'll be scared of a lawsuit next time I tape Friends or something and let my office mate borrow the tape.

  • How hard would it be to make one of your own? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @01:13AM (#2505814) Homepage Journal
    When I hear about devices like this one it really makes me wonder how hard it would be to recreate one of your own. There are plenty of video capture cards on the market today not to mention the TV cards, many of which are supported by linux. Encoding audio and video streams into MPEG in real time should be no big deal to a 1.4 Ghz athlon provided well written code is used. At worst a dual processor system would be needed. There are plenty of video cards on the market with video out built in. So my question is, why aren't hobbyists homebrewing systems that will do what these devices are designed to?

    I'm seriously considering it myself for the simple reasons that it doesn't sound all that hard and the gatekeepers of the thinly veiled propaganda known as television would disapprove.

    Lee

    • IIRC, the TiVo's are powered by a single PPC chip. Obviously the single chip is capable enough to handle whatever encoding/decoding is necessary, and beyond that it runs waaaay cooler than an Athlon, eliminating the need for a cpu fan.

      On the PPC track, for some reason I remember reading a recent story or post on /. about a set-top box barebones kit that used a PPC chip. Obviously something like that would be a great start in creating a custom TiVo clone.
  • I'm not sure what they're worried about here; popular TV shows are already readily available on the internet for download, usually within hours of their airing. You don't need a ReplayTV to record them; you can do it with a tv-tuner card on your computer and video recording software. People do it all the time - this would make it easier, but you only need one person to record each show for everyone to be able to get it, so that's really not important. And there's far fewer TV shows aired than there are music CDs released, so you don't need nearly as many people to rip the stuff - the people with TV-tuner cards or video-in on their PC are enough.

    So basically the stuff will be on the internet regardless of the outcome of this suit.
  • I sure would like to see more discussion about the overall intellectual property system and less moralizing and preaching from one soapbox or another. Pollux touches on it in his comments [slashdot.org] about the broadcasting business model. Yes, maybe the business model is wrong. Maybe the whole intellectual property model is wrong, and I mean in the sense of brokenness not in the sense of wrongdoing. I'm not trying to be the little voice of socialism or hacker utopia, I am simply saying that technology has opened holes in some of the basic assumptions that underlie economics. Like the holes in airport security, they've always been there waiting for somebody to step through them.

    What made the broadcasting industry possible was not the invention of the technology, it was that the expense of operating the technology limited its use to a few people who could afford to invest in it. Same with the recording industry and the publishing industry. The whole copymaking and distribution business is what made intellectual property a meaningful idea in the first place. Go all the way back to the printing press. If Gutenberg's invention had been so cheap and simple that virtually anybody could reel off as many copies of anything they wanted, the whole copyright concept itself probably wouldn't exist today. We never would have had a publishing industry with investments to protect, motivated to turn copyright into a holy word.

    We have the concept of IP because technology was developed in a certain order. Expand your mind a little. Instead of the knee-jerk "what about artist's rights?" reaction, try to forget for a moment that you ever heard of intellectual property. A minstrel wanders into your village and sings a song in a tavern. A storyteller tells a story. They leave town. The local minstrels and storytellers repeat the material, then they wander off to other towns, etc. The performers get paid to perform, in fact some of them might make more money than the creators of the material (no ethical problem there -- the copymaking industry does that in the real world). But the songs and the stories themselves are just sort of floating around in the air. They aren't intellectual property, but they also aren't public property, they aren't even property at all. They are just part of your culture.

    So in the hypothetical model time passes and someone invents the Internet, and suddenly you can zip this material off to your cousin in the next village effortlessly. Nobody gets majorly bothered because the fact of who created the material is not economically significant in this model. The minstrels and storytellers can keep doing their thing as long as people still value live performance.

    When you separate the fundamental ideas from those that are merely customary (or lucrative), the righteous moralizing everybody has been doing on all sides of IP issues starts to sound like arguing over whether Superman could outrun the Flash. Maybe the real truth is that there is no such thing as "Intellectual Property" at all. Or to borrow from Galaxy Quest, "There is no quantum flux, there is no auxiliary, there's no God Damn Ship!"

    Intellectual property is not a god-given right, it's not a "given" at all. It's an investment protection mechanism that was invented by investors, not inventors. At some point we have to move on. The economy would be a lot different without IP, but nobody really knows how. On the other hand, cars and trains might not exist if the concept of "wheeled travel" had been treated as the intellectual property of whoever invented the wagon.

    IP appears to be breaking, if not broken already. IP isn't an axiom or a law of nature, it's a tradition. The really disappointing thing is that most of the bright people who could be thinking up a different system seem to be spending their time arguing over how the contracts are written.

    Rant completed.

  • ...or you could just pay... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by karot ( 26201 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @06:42AM (#2506287)
    In the UK, we have two commercial-free channels (BBC1 and BBC2) - These are paid for through a "TV licence", payable by anyone who owns a TV and receives broadcasts on it (burden of proof is on you if you do not receive any signals) Even broadcasts of non-BBC channels is included.

    This license costs approx. £120 (GBP, ~$180) per year, and a massive infrastructure exists to prevent avoidance - Detector vans, databases etc... Last I heard public opinion was split about 50/50 as to whether to replace the license with advertising on these two channels, and therefore lose the massive cost of operating this infrastructure into the bargain.

    Does the US really want to exchange their currently simple television infrastructure for one small "fast-forward advert" button? Surely you are not so lazy that you can't use an ordinary Fast-forward button, and let-go at the end of the adverts (TIVO style) ???
  • I think it's easy to assume that the TV networks' upper crass that started this lawsuit know nothing about the implementation details of the new ReplayTV networking thing, just like any old management types out there (the richer, the dumber). They were just waiting for something "legally exploitable" to come out, so they can sue it into oblivion.

    Managers don't know shit about technical stuff, and neither do Judges. In the middle sit few big-ticket lawyers who know this all too well; they are the ones who will benefit from this. They're probably the ones who started the fire this time around.
  • I've been waiting and watching the various PVRs waiting for on that will do what I want. This one was actually looking like it might come close to it. TiVO would be perfect for me if it would allow me to get the video off and onto another media like a VCD or DVD-R but alas the work to do this is more than I'd like, it's unsupported code, and the primary support forum for TiVO usrs (not owned by them BTW) BANS discussions about doing this!

    So, TiVO ain't it. The DISH 501PVR (I'm a DISH user) apparently uses crap Microsoft code that's been *surpise* ABANDONED by Microsoft, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel for the next DISH PVR but they say it'll be Linux based.

    Helllooo companies. I'm a consumer. I have money I wish to spend on a VCR like device of commercial production quality. Here are my requirements in order to pry the dead presidents from my paws:

    Record shows, NOT time slots!
    Some sort of "season pass" deal like the TiVO.
    The ability to add larger HDs when I desire (PVR501 is cake to upgrade)
    There should be support or SDK made available, there shouldn't be stupid lawsuits against people hacking the box.
    The box should support multiple tuners so I can watch and record.
    I should be able to pause live TV.
    I want to be able to fast forward past commercials. IF they want me to watch the commercials stop making them insipid and show me something interesting - and not 50times a day!

    Most importantly, give me a method of archiving on media like a DVD-R or VCD. I'd really like to be able to edit these on my PC before final archiving. I'm doing this from VCR now and it sux.

    I, as a consumer, want a box like this. I will pay cash for it and I'll pay a bunch for it. You can make all the noise you want but I'll have what I want on way or another. TiVO is nearly there! If the hackers manage to get it to the point where the shows can be pulled off easily I'll buy one and mod the crap out of it to get what I want. Either build what I want and let me use it or lose my money and interest! This box was looking good - thanks alot jerks. TiVO isn't yet integrated with DISH but with the possible purchase of DirectTV it could be - I hope. These lawsuits are NOT endearing me or my dollars to the networks.

    Some URLs of interest:

    http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgitivo/forumdisplay. cg i?action=topics&forum=TiVo+Underground&number=6&Da ysPrune=10&SUBMIT=Go [TiVO Underground]
    http://www.9thtee.com/tivoupgrades.htm [TiVO Upgrades - Ethernet!]
    http://www.9thtee.com/extractstream.html [Video Extraction from the TiVO]
    http://www.vcdhelp.com/ [Great site for VCD help]

    One of these days I'll own a PVR but NOT until I'm able to do what I want with it - by hook or by crook.=!
  • TiVo boxes have the same 30-second skip feature (at least the new ones do). It's an undocumented feature, and you have to have a bit of technical savvy to enable it. I would expect that most /. readers could enable this feature, though.

    Like another astute reader posted, the governmen allows the networks to broadcast as a service for the citizens of this country. Broadcasting is a privilege, not a right, and there is no guarantee that they can make money by broadcasting. It would also seem to me that the networks would be required to prove that they have lost money because of this practice. With billions spent every year on TV advertising, I hardly think this is costing the networks money.

    I really can't see this case going anywhere.
    • TiVo boxes have the same 30-second skip feature (at least the new ones do). It's an undocumented feature, and you have to have a bit of technical savvy to enable it. I would expect that most /. readers could enable this feature, though

      Technical savvy? Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on the remote is all it takes.

      Bob

  • Sony Betamax (Score:2, Insightful)

    by An El Haqq ( 83446 )
    How is this different from the tizzy raised about the Betamax when it was released? I would guess that the case would be a DMCA vs. the Sony case as far as strategy goes.

    See the Supreme Court's opinion [hrrc.org] on the Betamax issue.

    Statements of note:
    The District Court concluded that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement.


    If the Betamax were used to make copies for a commercial or profit-making purpose, such use would presumptively be unfair. The contrary presumption is appropriate here, however, because the District Court's findings plainly establish that time-shifting for private home use must be characterized as a noncommercial, nonprofit activity.


    the District Court rejected plaintiffs' suggestion that the commercial attractiveness of television broadcasts would be diminished because Betamax owners would use the pause button or fast-forward control to avoid viewing advertisements


    This case wouldn't even be an issue if Replay weren't a digital medium and therefore covered by the DMCA. I suspect that the major networks are counting on the ability of the DMCA to override fair use rights. I don't think it will work. They may be caught trying to defend the notion that the advance button is different from a FFWD button.

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