TiVo Users Fear Recording Restrictions

I used to have a TiVo, and I loved it. The ability to “time shift” your TV watching, even while watching live TV, was fantastic.

So you can imagine I was a little peeved when I read that TiVo had released an update to their software that allowed copyright owners to reach into your TiVo box and mark items for deletion.

There’s copyright protection, and then there’s copyright protection. So far, most of the TV and movie studio attempts have been at prevention. They want to add technology to digital TV, CDs, DVDs and the like that make it impossible to use the content in ways that violate copyright. Fine. Understandable.

But reaching into my home and telling my TiVo what to delete is simply an invasion. It’s also a breach of trust between TiVo and their customers and I just can’t believe they would even test out such a service.

It’s similar to the idea that someone from a record label comes into your house when you’re not there and takes a bunch of CDs out of your CD holder and throws them in the trash.

I’m sure the argument of the studios is, “hey, that’s OUR content, and you only have restricted rights to consume it in the fashion we see fit.” That may be legally true, but it’s the surest way to raise the public’s ire and lose goodwill (short of suing your customers, which content providers have done as well). Plus, I DO have the right to record and store TV shows for my own personal, non-commercial use. I just don’t have the right to distribute the material.

So keep your damn hands off my shit yo!

What I want is an electronic shotgun that I can sit in front of my TiVo with and blast the first studio executive who tries to mess with my legally recorded copies of Lost and Deadwood.

Something that would send some digital grapeshot right back up their asses, fry their hard drive and display some message on the screen like: “How do YOU like it beotch?”