Hulu Sued For Violating 'TV Guide' Patent

from the because-without-that,-no-one-would-have-thought-of-it dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Rovi (the hip new name for DRM company Macrovision) had taken a bunch of the patents it got when it bought Gemstar/TV Guide a few years back, and sued Amazon for daring to offer a TV listing on IMDB. Apparently Rovi is having so much fun suing people for doing totally obvious things that it's expanded the effort and is now suing Hulu as well. It's interesting to see that it's actually using different patents in this case, compared to in the Amazon case, but that doesn't make them any less questionable:

• 6,396,546: "Electronic television program guide schedule system and method"
• 7,103,906: "User controlled multi-device media-on-demand system"
• 7,769,775: "Search engine for video and graphics with access authorization"

Yet another case where actually doing the obvious thing to provide the obvious service you want to offer... gets you sued. America's innovation system at work.

Filed Under: patents, tv guide
Companies: gemstar, hulu, macrovision, rovi

DRM Company Releases One-Sided Study On DVD Copying

from the let's-pick-this-apart dept

The MPAA has probably been the worst of the various Big Copyright industries in terms of the level to which their studies exaggerate the negative impact of unauthorized copying, while totally ignoring any positive impact. For example, it likes to widely cite a study (which it paid for) that triple- and quadruple-counts "losses" by noting the ripple effects. At the same time, it totally ignores the same positive ripple effects (the ones that cancel out the negative ones, and may even outweigh them). Of course, a big part of this is the claim that an unauthorized copy is a "lost sale."

Now it appears that Macrovision, the big DRM company that supplies DRM to movie studios has cooked up its own study trying to support the MPAA in this argument, claiming that lots of people are copying DVDs and that most of them would buy the DVDs they copy otherwise. However, the LA Times' Jon Healey does an excellent job pointing out the many significant weaknesses in the study, starting, of course, with the fact that it was paid for by Macrovision, with a clear intent in the results. And while Macrovision hypes of the fact that many people in the survey said they would have bought the DVDs they copied, it ignores the fact that the majority of folks they spoke to said the DVDs they made copies of were ones they already legitimately owned.

Even then, the results really aren't as significant as Macrovision would like you (or, rather, Hollywood) to believe. As Healey notes, the study completely ignores the positive impacts of being able to make a copy of a DVD. In fact, the most common reason for making a copy was for perfectly legal time-shifting or back-up purposes from DVDs they legitimately own. In other words, being able able to make those copies is a valuable part of the DVD. Take that away and people will buy fewer DVDs because you've made them less valuable. But, of course, that doesn't show up anywhere in the results, because that's the last thing Macrovision wants people thinking about.

While the study also hypes up the fact that more TV shows are being copied via DVD, it ignores the fact that this is probably quite beneficial. Since TV shows are ongoing experiences, you want more viewers -- and if a copy of a DVD gets someone new hooked on the show, they're more likely to start watching it on TV or to buy a future DVD. But, again, that's not mentioned at all. Either way, props to Healey and the LA Times for digging into the numbers a bit and not just parroting the press release findings, like many other news sources.

Filed Under: copying, dvd, losses, mpaa, piracy, statistics
Companies: macrovision

Memo To Macrovision: Interoperable DRM Is An Oxymoron

from the snake-oil dept

Macrovision "chief evangelist" Richard Bullwinkle has an article at News.com that's a bit of a head-scratcher. He sings the praises of Apple's iPod ecosystem, but then complains that Apple's DRM prevents content from being played on non-Apple devices. Consumer electronics manufacturers and content creators, he says, need to "work together to create standards" for digital media. That's music to my ears. Except that I suspect that Bullwinkle isn't actually talking about open standards. Macrovision, after all, is a DRM vendor. If companies wanted to distribute their music or movies in open formats like MPEG, they wouldn't need Macrovision's help to do it -- they could just ditch DRM altogether (which, clearly, Macrovision doesn't want). What Macrovision appears to be pushing for Apple and other vendors to switch to its own "open" DRM format. But in fact, there's no such thing. DRM is a walled garden by definition. Some walled gardens are easier to get into than others. The DVD format, for example, has been licensed to a bunch of different vendors. But that doesn't change the fact that there's still a DVD cartel that shuts down innovative devices they don't like. An even more egregious example is Microsoft's "interoperable" PlaysForSure format. Microsoft touted it as an "open" alternative to FairPlay until last year, when—surprise!—they decided not to allow people to play PlaysForSure media files on the Zune. Ultimately, Macrovision isn't interested in getting rid of walled gardens. It's just upset when it's not the gardener.

Filed Under: drm, interoperability
Companies: apple, macrovision

Why Would A DRM Company Buy TV Guide?

from the because-it's-thinking-in-the-wrong-direction dept

Macrovision, a company that's well known for its DRM products, made quite a splash today with its announced plans to buy Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 billion. The rationale for the deal seems to be that the folks at Macrovision may actually believe the commonly stated myth that DRM "opens new business models." Macrovision talks about how combining its DRM with Gemstar listings and content could enable a bunch of new offerings -- but it's difficult to believe those new offerings will be particularly compelling. DRM has never been about enabling new business models, but about making any content less valuable by limiting its usefulness in the hopes of being able to charge separately for each use. Perhaps that's what they mean by "new business models" but it's hardly a business model if it's simply pissing off consumers. As Saul Hansell at the NY Times notes, the direction Macrovision seems to be moving in is (along with the recent story of hard drives that block MP3 sharing) one where technology companies feel that they need to be policing how people use content. That's a very anti-consumer position to be in -- and it's generally not a good business proposition to be focused on limiting consumers. Apparently, investors agree -- as they've sent the stock price of both companies way down in reaction to the deal.

Filed Under: content, drm, tv guide
Companies: gemstar, macrovision, tv guide

Still More Bad DRM News

from the slow-motion-train-wreck dept

As you might have gathered, we don't much like digital rights management, which doesn't stop piracy and doesn't create value for consumers, but does irritate them and create security problems. This week there are two more stories illustrating these problems. First, there's been another Blu-Ray crack. Blu-Ray discs employ two different DRM technologies. One, called AACS, was cracked back in January. The other, called BD+, was supposed to provide an added layer of "security" and differentiate the format from HD-DVD. The specifications for BD+ were released just last June, and the first discs using the technology were released a month ago. Now, to no one's surprise, a company called SlySoft has announced a BD+ crack. The second development is likely to prove even more embarrassing to DRM supporters. Macrovision, the company made famous when its anti-copying technology was incorporated into VCRs in the 1980s, also sells DRM technology called SafeDisc used by Windows computer games. Ironically, "SafeDisc" turns out not to be so safe for your computer, as Microsoft is warning that the technology opens up security vulnerabilities on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Malware running as an unprivileged user could use vulnerabilities in the software to gain administrative privileges. DRM is bad for everyone: technology companies, copyright holders, and their customers.

Filed Under: blu-ray, drm
Companies: macrovision, microsoft