{"id":8651,"date":"2005-09-13T18:20:52","date_gmt":"2005-09-14T01:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/09\/13\/how-to-strangle-the-dvr-industry-in-its-cradle.html"},"modified":"2005-09-13T18:20:52","modified_gmt":"2005-09-14T01:20:52","slug":"how_to_strangle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/13\/how_to_strangle.html","title":{"rendered":"How to strangle the DVR industry in its cradle"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s cool about DVRs like TiVo? That you can automatically grab any shows you want from TV, hold onto them, watch them at your convenience, watch them again, and completely control, from a time perspective, what you do with TV content.<\/p>\n

The big media companies, of course, hate it, because it means that they think they therefore lose <\/em>that much control. So now they are starting to impose restrictions on what TiVo and others can do with their copyrighted material<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I recently got a sample of Tivo DRM, accidentally I suspect. Recently a Simpson’s rerun recorded with a red-flag next to it (an icon I’ve never seen before). When I selected the episode, I got a message to the effect that “the copyright holder prohibited saving the episode past date mm\/dd”. I also noted that this episode could not be copied using Tivo To-go (but ironically it could be “saved to tape” ? I guess that is the analog hole).<\/p>\n

I can understand (though rail against) restricting folks from copying the materials for their own future use. But putting in restrictions indicating that the recorded show will “expire” within a certain date? <\/p>\n

Screw. You.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

I may not watch a show for weeks after recording. I may wait until I can sit down and watch several episodes at once. I may love a show and want to save it so that Margie can watch it, or so that friends and I can watch it in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

You want to tell me that I can’t do that?<\/p>\n

Imagine someone building a “self destruct” mechanism into your VCR tapes, a la Mission: Impossible<\/em>. Imagine self-destucting DVDs — oh, wait, we’ve had that and it’s failed miserably.<\/p>\n

The media companies are so terrified of losing control of their works that they are willing, even eager, to cripple DVRs, make them far less valuable of a proposition, make them as regulated and restricted as DRM-heavy MP3 players. And they’ll kill the industry — willingly — not realizing that they’ll kill all the DVR-based enthusiasm and market they’ve just started building.<\/p>\n

Content does not become popular, or profitable, by keeping it locked away and doled out in tiny, controlled doses. I’m not saying anything like “content wants to be free,” but content wants to be freely distributed, and amount of money that folks are then willing to spend on that content, or on still more content, increases far <\/em>more than a locked-down, gate-kept, Soviet Bloc-style product will ever achieve.<\/p>\n

If TiVo goes ahead with this OS, they’ll drive away a lot of their loyal fanbase. And TiVo cannot afford that. Nor, frankly, can the companies who are, with short-sighted malice aforethought, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s cool about DVRs like TiVo? That you can automatically grab any shows you want from TV, hold onto them, watch them at your convenience, watch them again, and completely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech","category-media-moguls"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7698,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/17\/i_almost_got_my.html","url_meta":{"origin":8651,"position":0},"title":"I almost got my TiVo","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Jan-05 10:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"Fascinating story here about TiVo's struggles -- and about a deal that might have changed the technical landscape in my house: After months of hard bargaining, TiVo reached an agreement...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7626,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/25\/no_tech_for_you.html","url_meta":{"origin":8651,"position":1},"title":"No tech for you!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 25-Jan-05 9:07am","format":false,"excerpt":"Endangered Gizmos, as presented by the EFF: FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo \"God's machine,\" and its devotees have been known to declare, \"You can take my TiVo when you...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7393,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/16\/im_gonna_get_my.html","url_meta":{"origin":8651,"position":2},"title":"I’m gonna get my TiVo?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 16-Mar-05 9:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"Comcast and TiVo have inked a deal for the latter to provide software for the former's Motorola DVR platform. Which is what we have. W00t! According to TiVo's press release:...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5038,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/12\/i_shouldnt_show.html","url_meta":{"origin":8651,"position":3},"title":"I shouldn’t show this to Margie","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 12-Nov-03 11:20am","format":false,"excerpt":"An article about how TiVo is running some peoples' lives ragged. \"For something that is supposed to be relaxing and unwinding at the end of the day, you (think) 'Wow!...","rel":"","context":"In "My Computer"","block_context":{"text":"My Computer","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/my-computer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2618,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/28\/okay_margie_her.html","url_meta":{"origin":8651,"position":4},"title":"Okay, Margie, here’s a good reason not to get a TiVo","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 28-May-02 3:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"TiVo is now \"spamming\" its subscribers by downloading programs they don't want, but which sponsors would like to have seen. 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