Fergie's Tech Blog

TV Execs Threatening To Sue TiVo

Over on techdirt.com, Mike Masnick writes:

Yesterday we pointed to the news about TiVo's latest "ToGo" offering, and pointed out that the announcement seemed to focus a bit too much on the added copy protection to make all this work. Of course, now it's becoming clear why they did so. They didn't clear this with the TV execs first.

Greg Andrew writes in to point out that the TV execs don't seem to think the new TiVo offering is "crippled enough." If you remember a year ago when TiVo first wanted to introduce the ToGo feature, they actually had to go to the FCC and plead their case against the TV execs and ask for "permission" to innovate and add this feature that customers were clamoring for.

Think about what that means for innovation -- if every new innovation meant you had to go to the government and ask for permission from all industries impacted. The automakers would have had to go before the government and ask them for permission to make cars, as it could impact the buggy makers. Television would have needed to be approved by movie execs because it might impact the movie business. The list could go on and on. However, it looks like TiVo didn't ask for "permission" first in this case -- and now they might get sued. It's worth noting that some TV execs don't seem quite that upset by this, which is a good sign. At least a few are seeing the light.

To see the embedded links in this article, read it at techdirt.com here.

posted by Fergie @ 11/22/2005 10:31:00 AM