Networks and Studios Against PVRs

HiredMan sent in an LA Times story talking about more suits against PVR makers like Replay and Tivo. The most bizarre quote to me is that the suit argues that "it's illegal to let consumers record and store shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description." Huh?

Explaining the bizzare "illegal" quote

[Seth Finkelstein]

The "rationale" for "it's illegal to let consumers record and store shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description." is "explained" further down:

"If a ReplayTV customer can simply type 'The X-Files' or 'James Bond' and have every episode of 'The X-Files' and every James Bond film recorded in perfect digital form and organized, compiled and stored on the hard drive of his or her ReplayTV 4000 device, it will cause substantial harm to the market for prerecorded DVD, videocassette and other copies of those episodes and films," the lawsuit states.

IANAL, but I think the idea is reaching to come up with a negative effect on the copyrighted work itself, so as to undermine the longstanding law that personal use of VCRs is fair use.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

Re:When will they learn?

[crow]

I take it you don't have a PVR.

Using something like my ReplayTV has totally revolutionized how I watch TV. I've heard owners of other PVRs say the same thing.

Before I had a PVR, I would make an effort to watch my favorite shows live. If I wasn't going to be home, I would tape them, but that only applied to a very few shows--most I wouldn't bother with the hassle.

Now that I have a PVR, I tell it exactly what I want to watch, and I never worry about when it is showing. I never make an effort to watch something live. In fact, I make a point of not watching live television, as I can watch something previously recorded without commercials at the same time as my show is recording.

And don't compare fast forwarding with a VCR to skipping over the commercials with ReplayTV. The new ReplayTV 4000 series skips over commercials automatically and instantly. With my older model, I use the 30-second skip button to instantly jump past each commercial. While I didn't think it would be a big deal before I bought it, I can't imagine living without my Quick Skip and Instant Replay buttons. (I've even upgraded my remote with a JP1 cable so that I have a 2-minute skip button and a 1-minute instant replay button, as well.)

While you can make an analogy to VCRs when discussing PVRs, they are in practice a totally new technology. The networks understand this, and they have good reason to be scared.

Re:Explaining the bizzare "illegal" quote

[Seth Finkelstein]

Take a look at the legal criteria for fair use [cornell.edu]

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

They're trying to make an argument which goes to at least element #4. Remember, this an EFFECT test. That's not the same as the idea of being possible to do it with much more work before these sorts of PVRs

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

What they really want

[cyberformer]

They're trying to foce the PVR makers to add "features" like this [theregister.co.uk] which would allow the TV station to prevent a program being recorded unless the viewer paid an additional fee.

DRM features in Replay 4000 Series

[Krelnik]

It's been reported in several of these stories that the Replay 4000 limits internet sends of recorded shows to a total of 15, and they have to be people you have previously agreed to exchange shows with. This is very different than Napster, where a total stranger could grab a song off my disk without my knowledge.

And there are other Digital Rights Management features in Replay 4000 [sonicblue.com] that have NOT yet been reported upon. I'm a Replay 4000 owner, and I can comment on some of these.

SonicBlue licenses Macrovision's technology [yahoo.com], which is the same signal-munging technology that keeps VCR's from recording the output of your DVD player.

The interesting part is that a Replay 4000 will let you record a Macrovision-encoded program. I personally tested this by feeding the output of my DVD player into the secondary input on my Replay 4160 as a test. The Replay reproduces the Macrovision signal when outputting the program. This means you can time-shift copy-protected shows, but you cannot dub them out of the Replay onto a VCR!

Also, according to this press release [yahoo.com], when a Replay 4000 sees that a show is Macrovision-encoded, it will not allow the user to share this program over the internet.

I think this is a pretty decent compromise between preserving the customer's ability to time-shift programs, and the program-owner's right to control copying of that program on permanent media.

And vis-a-vis the big conglomerates, this is a big change from the early Replay units. I've owned a Replay 2004 for over two years, and those early units would strip the Macrovision encoding from shows you passed through it. Thus they could be used as an intermediary for dubbing DVD's and other protected content to tape.

For this and other reasons I really think the media giants are going to fall on their face in this lawsuit. No judge is going to side with them when its so obvious that SonicBlue has made these efforts to accomodate their interests.

Re:Explaining the bizzare "illegal" quote

[Artagel]

One of the elements of a "fair use" analysis is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." 17 USC 107(4). The device at issue in the Universal Pictures Studios/Sony case (betamax) could not complete a compendium of the X-files as easily. If you think that the Universal Pictures Studios case was well reasoned, then the difference probably doesn't have much weight. However, the decision (to the extent it relied upon fair use) has been roundly criticized over time. (Not as much as Roe v. Wade, but what is?) A revisiting of the issue by a Supreme Court that is more likely to protect business and property rights than the Burger Court could come out differently.

Scary but true

[kovacsp]

What's scary is that I was in the lobby of a movie theater the other night, and a group of mildly rowdy people were goofing around and snapping pictures of each other. An attendant stormed up and yelled, "You can't take pictures in here. Those posters are copyrighted!"

Jeez. This isn't the US Mint you know, it was a movie poster.

Re:A Wrench.

[Mr.Intel]

I don't think the TV remote eroded ad viewing at all. Most (if not all) Broadcast channels go to commercial at the same exact time.

I do and I personally pick two or three programs to watch at the same time so I don't sit through the commercials. I make sure that the channels don't air ads at the same time (like TNN-STTNG and Fox-Seinfeld). Ad free bliss. FWIW, I am the IS mgr for a TV station.

Re:Scary but true

[plague3106]

Sounds liek they should have said that the pictures were for personal use. Which i think is pretty easy to prove since they were actually takign pics of each other. You ARE allowed to copy things for personal use (that is, not distribute it publicly).

Re:Commercials

[swb]

The most disturbing part of the story is that they claim deleting commercials is violating the copyright.

It kind of is breaking the deal, isn't it? I mean, "We agree to broadcast this program, you agree to watch the commercials." I know, its not entirely enforceable -- you can run to the fridge, hit mute, hit FF or hit "Skip:30" (or whatever the Tivo button is), but for the vast majority of people watching realtime or on VCRs it is enforceable -- they watch most commercials or at least see them briefly as they zip past*.

A "paradigm shift" of everyone watching all their shows on PVR would kind of be a something for nothing deal, eliminating the financial value of the commercials and the production revenue stream.

I think its total paranoia to think that this paradigm shift will happen. Most people are two fsck'n stupid to run anything more complicated than a microwave, and even most of them can't set the clock on them.

*Offtopic UL:
In the late 80s major advertisers began to test their commercials for effectiveness at VCR "scan" speeds in addition to the usual testing done at realtime speeds. Commercials with too many jump cuts or too few still shots were required to be recut to make sense at high speed.

Jack Valenti Quote

[Hieronymus Howard]

Courtesy of the New York Times:

'The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology,' Jack Valenti said, threatens an entire industry's 'economic vitality and future security.'
Mr. Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, and he was ready for a rhetorical rumble. The new technology, he said, 'is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.'

It was 1982, and he was talking about videocassette recorders.

And they're still as paranoid and as utterly wrong now as they were 20 years ago.

HH