more on TIVO'S EXPANSION PLANS OPPOSED BY COPYRIGHT HOLDERS

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rick Bradley <rick () rickbradley com>
Date: July 23, 2004 9:28:58 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>, dewayne () warpspeed com
Subject: Re: [IP] TIVO'S EXPANSION PLANS OPPOSED BY COPYRIGHT HOLDERS

[Dave, for IP if you like]

* David Farber (dave () farber net) [040723 17:24]:
> [Note:  No surprises here.  The MPAA pulled this same stunt with
> ReplayTV and drove that company off the map.  I fail to understand why
> TiVo didn't seem to learn anything from that lesson.  DLH]
>
> TIVO'S EXPANSION PLANS OPPOSED BY COPYRIGHT HOLDERS

Not all copyright holders.  According to TiVO's 6/4/2004 proxy  
statement:

    
http://www.freeedgar.com/EdgarConstruct/Data/1193125/04-98954/ 
ddefr14a.htm
      (free registration is required, though bugmenot may have  
logins...)

At least one long-standing member of the board of directors is a VP at
NBC Cable Networks.  Of additional interest are major stock allocations
to shareholders including DIRECTV, NBC Cable, AOL, Hughes Network
Systems, and Discovery Communications.


I've never given much credence to the (seemingly popular) notion that
TiVO is somehow this cool little company that's one of The Good Guys,
sitting shivering across the fence from The Big Media Bad Guys, about to
get squashed at any moment -- some last bastion of high-tech defending
consumer rights to skip commercials and watch Monday's Baywatch at
3:38am on Friday.  TiVO is a publicly traded corporation, with plenty of
Big Media interests holding significant stakes in the venture.  If it's
not in Big Media's interest for TiVO to do something, ultimately TiVO
won't do it.  I frankly, don't see the fence.

People are pretending there's this debate between whether Hollywood is
going to let consumers send movies over WiFi, or burn them off to their
own backup media, or hook two recorders together.  The myth that the
debate, if it were legitimate, is centered on TiVO.  This is great
marketing for TiVO, and de-legitimizes anyone who's not TiVO as far as
this debate is concerned -- which is absolutely necessary for the MPAA
to keep consumers' eyes on the ball.  TiVO plays along and cripples
their machines, while pretending that they're pushing the envelope and
are the only ones rolling out innovative technologies.  There's this
whole public debate over whether poor-but-cool TiVO is gonna get
squashed by The Man.

Ha.

Meanwhile the reality is that open source projects like MythTV and
Freevo left TiVO behind technologically years ago.  Oh, the developers
around the project ultimately have to pull continual hackery to get
access to information like program schedules, but this still hasn't
proven to be a real problem, and they still provide a more feature-laden
product suite:  you can have an actual cluster of MythTV clients and
servers strung throughout your house, recording, archiving, and
providing real TV-on-demand 24/7 with no extra charges.  You can control
your open-source TiVO alternatives via the web, and it's trivial to
backup movies, stream them to your office (modulo bandwidth) or send
them to your friends.  You can even play any of hundreds of arcade games
on the same systems by using MAME.  The things have weather info,
jukeboxes, and plenty of gewgaws built in, ad nauseum.

The real debate, which Hollywood is trying to bury at all cost, is
whether the MPAA is ever going to be able to do anything to stop the
real threat to their complete control of media:  open source
applications which give their owners complete control of their own
media.  Hollywood can't even address this problem head-on for fear that
consumers will be aware of alternatives to products like TiVO (which
they ultimately will be able to control fully).  So long as consumers
keep their eye on the ball they won't know that the TiVO/Hollywood
debate is a sham (it's more a partnership than a debate), that they
could just ignore all of this, that there are already full suites of
applications that Hollywood will never be able to take away nor sue out
of existence.  That's gotta suck the wind out of the (ad) sales
(numbers) though, doesn't it?

Eyes on the ball, everyone.  Hollywood's frickin' terrified.

You can have your precious TiVO, but you'll have to pry the Freevo code
from my cold dead fingers.

(All this from a guy who only watches TV when a UK basketball game is
on!)

Best,
Rick
--
 http://www.rickbradley.com    MUPRN: 972
                       |  matter where one is,
   random email haiku  |  such as fast </TT><BR> <TT>food joints, strip
                       |  malls, subdivisions.

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