Viewing secrets are safe with Sonicblue
District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper on Friday overturned a late April ruling that required the maker of ReplayTV set-top box technology to write and install software to monitor what its customers were watching.
The suit, originally filed in October by several major movie studios and TV networks, including Viacom’s Paramount Pictures and CBS network and Disney’s ABC network, said Sonicblue’s ReplayTV recorders infringed on copyright laws. The digital video recording service allows viewers to record live TV shows, store them on a hard drive, and skip commercials, and to send TV shows to other ReplayTV owners over the Internet.
The studios and networks are trying desparately to litigate and legislate PVRs out of existence, or at least into a very crippled existence. Here, they wanted the viewing and recording records of SonicBlue’s customers to be turned over. Fortunately, they were denied this intrusion into consumer privacy and were not allowed to dictate consumer electronics development. SonicBlue’s CEO summarized the situation nicely.
“If the networks and studios focused on the inevitable evolution of their business instead of attempts to stifle technology, we believe everyone involved would benefit, consumers most of all.”
