From: "Miller, Jeffrey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bryon Daly > > I guess the real crux of the issue for me is that I don't > think they have > any business gathering that information in the first place; it is not > necessary for them to do so, and they don't get it as a > natural result of > the service they provide (as opposed to, say, supermarkets > tracking your > spending habits using your grocery discount card).
You better believe its important - easy skipping of commercials needs to be tracked so that they can defend the feature (or market it better)
I think they can do market research the normal way, like every other company, without needing their product to spy on you.
plus selling this kind of aggregate data to 3rd parties has got to bring them a pile of $.. which means my service i cheaper and eventually smarter.
Of course, more money for them is what it's all about. I personally would rather pay a slightly higher price that covers the actual cost of the service and retain full privacy, than a subsidized price without the privacy.
Would you try to save a few bucks by buying a DVD player/VCR that reported all your video watching, or a refrigerator that reported all your eating habits? Maybe a coffee maker that tracks your coffee drinking?
> TiVo users let their TiVo's dial-in so that they can download > the current > program listings. They *pay* a monthly/yearly fee for this > service. Making > the TiVo upload user behavior data is pure snoopery, whether > or not they only aggregatize it.
How is it snoopery? Is it any wose than someone sitting in the mall watching what people wear to track fashion trends?
Because it's in the privacy of your home, rather than a public mall? I'd liken it more to them observing what you wear to bed than what you're wearing at the mall.
> Maybe it's paranoid, but I just don't like the trend of > appliances that want > to connect up and share info about your behavior.
*shrug* I don't honestly care, myself, as long as A) is aggregated, and B) it provides a direct benefit to the company (and thereby an inderect benefit to me)
Jeff, I never pictured you as a trickle-down, supply-side kinda guy! :-)
> Plus, there's my horror scenario: > TV broadcast and cable networks use this behavior data to > prove that - > *gasp* - viewers are skipping over commercials! Why, that's > *THEFT*. > (Don't laugh - I've already seen this argument presented > seriously).
I am laughing, because I've never heard it presented by anyone credible :)
Jamie Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting?
http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/1113 http://www.2600.com/news/050102-files/jamie-kellner.txt
I might be laughable to you and I, but when the lobbyists start pouring the bucks into Congress, and start to leverage anti-commercial skipping technology onto the anti-piracy chip and DRM laws that hollywood is pushing, it won't be laughable anymore. Remember, these are essentially the same chowderheads that approved DMCA.
Lobby > pressure builds on Congress to act on the "billions of lost > dollars" this > theft causes, and we get a new law requiring all new > video-recording/playback devices to have chips in them that > prevent skipping > over commercials. With of course any circumvention methods > being made > illegal by the DMCA.
Since you don't use TiVo, why would that matter to you?
Because I was considering getting one. I'd still like to, just hold the spying please.
Besides, if that happened, I've just build my own PVR (heck, TiVo is running a Linux distro, so its all open source at the root anyways..)
But of course in that case you'd be a criminal, because hacking your TiVo, spreading information about how to do so, or even making your own PVR would be illegal under the DMCA.
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