Earlier this week Herkko Hietanen gave a talk at Berkman Center for Internet & Society with the provocative title “Network Recorders and Social Enrichment of Television.” Hietanen is well known for his research on Creative Commons licensing and is a practicing lawyer who counsels clients on technology related legal issues.
The subjects covered will be very familiar to the ZNF community including; TiVo, Myth TV, the rights of Consumers to use share recorded content, and if content distributors will try to stop the watching of recorded video on a mobile phone.
Although Dave doesn’t always find value in FCC meetings, it’s important to hear what the professors at Harvard Law School think of PVRs and Sling for the iPhone given their influence on case law interpretation. Video and audio only versions of Mr. Hietanen’s talk can be found here. I’ve timestamped and transcribed some key statements:
[13:39] I talked, last week to one of the big network channels and asked them if they have any idea how to get their content to mobile phones, and he said [the network broadcaster’s] only strategy was to use cable company and not independently distribute content on their own…since the cable companies fear losing exclusivity.
[21:10] …for quite a long time we’ve had home [television] recorders. The problem those, MythTV especially, is that any recorder at home, starting from VCRs, people can’t program them. If it’s too difficult, people just won’t use it…Home recorders are not user friendly […] and there’s TiVo which is a very walled garden that people don’t have control of. You can order pizza with it, but you cannot get access to your recordings, you cannot share content with your friends.
[27:49] I’d say that there’s no doubt [content rights owners] will try to attack new technologies, so how do [new technology makers] protect against these attacks? Basically you have to have stupid recorders that do nothing but record the shows, and have smart, open, [software] that can be modified [by the consumer] that do all the modification and enrichment of the [recorded shows].
[32:50] It doesn’t make sense for each person to make individual recordings of the same show. It is a waste of resources…At some point, users are going [to want] to start sharing resources. Why get content from a central server if your neighbor has it? It is a lot faster. But this, of course, is what got Replay TV into trouble.
[34:10] Social television is not new. There have been numerous previous technologies that let you interact with your friends…but for live television, any television, I would not want to share my screen-estate [sic] with my friends. So the social has to be before the show and after the show.
[36:50] We are going to see a lot more internet connected recorders, which can, with the help of social networks, that will fix television…we are going to need some brave entrepreneurs who are willing to test whether the Sony BetaMax [court] decision will hold in the digital world as well. Having networked recorders is any different from VHS or BetaMax.
[54:20] What I am interested in is what’s going to happen. When [personal video recorders] get connected, what’s going to happen? What kind of innovation are we going to get? I am waiting for innovation at the edge to be stopped by someone.
Like cable providers are ever going to allow people, even if they’re both customers in the same area, on the same MSO, to share anything. The content providers don’t want that, and neither do the operators. And what’s that about TiVo owners can’t access their recordings? It’s called TiVo to Go, and those of us with Series3/TiVo HD have had that for HD content for what, 2 years now? Yes, we can’t pull protected content, but it’s better than… well, every other alternative out there, and certainly better than the network-storage MSO model they’re talking about – you think the MSO is going to let you download that new episode of House to convert for playback on your iPhone? No way. Not a chance.
I think their perspective on this is a bit skewed.
I don’t know about skewed, but it certainly seems like he was working from dated information.
What is frustrating is that the lawyers and courts will spend years, if not decades, pondering this stuff. Meanwhile the pace of technology would/could have allowed the consumer to do many new things, but the advancement is held back by the legal paralysis. (Or people end up in jail for using the technology before the laws are written.)
I think I’ll go order a pizza through my TiVo.