Warner Bros. Chmn. Barry Meyer went on the offensive against the consumer electronics industry at MPAA’s Business of Show Business conference Tues., accusing CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro of doublespeak. Meyer portrayed the entertainment industry as the bastion of flexibility and consumer choice, and criticized Shapiro’s characterization of Hollywood at CES as an industry that “limits” and “smothers,” presumably through digital rights management. “The only choice that we're not offering is free. How is this limiting or smothering?” Meyer asked.
Warner Bros. Chmn. Barry Meyer went on the offensive against the CE industry at MPAA’s Business of Show Business conference Tues., accusing CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro of doublespeak.
Time Warner Cable, pleased with the early customer response to its Start Over time-shifting service, plans to expand the service to about 12 more cable markets this year, tripling its reach. Keith Nichols, senior dir.-new product deployments for Time Warner, said TW will extend Start Over to most of its 27 regional divisions after having launched the service in 6 markets the past 15 months. But, speaking at the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers’ (SCTE’s) conference in Houston last week, Nichols declined to say when and where Time Warner will roll out the service next.
The copyright system will see a “sudden and surprising” collapse by 2012 akin to the Berlin Wall’s fall, Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Barlow said at the hacker- led Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. That outcome demands “civil disobedience” on a massive scale, he added, encouraging Internet users to flout private “locks” and copyright laws to give authorities pause in enforcement. Interviewed via video blog by Netzpolitik.org after debating Stanford U. law Prof. Larry Lessig, Barlow said he and Lessig have a “really good symbiosis.” Leading “free culture” advocate Lessig voiced pessimism at the conference that copyright can be transformed within 20 years, in contrast to former Grateful Dead lyricist Barlow, who calls himself a “pathological optimist” on the subject. “If we keep pressing the system where it breaks, eventually the system is… so obviously broken that there’s no choice but for people to start evolving another economic model [for copyright], and that’s actually what’s already happening rather rapidly,” Barlow said. Physical and virtual copyright are separate, non-overlapping realms, he said: “When it’s become obvious that it’s simply not going to work in cyberspace, I think you'll see a collapse that will be as sudden and surprising as the thing that took this wall down over here,” referring to the Berlin Wall. “I think it will happen sometime in the next 5 years, if not less,” he said. Barlow urged that copyright violations be done “ethically,” giving attribution to creators so they get an “enhanced reputation and thereby greater economic return.” But “pay no attention to these people” -- presumably legislators and rightsholders -- “when it comes to being creative,” he added: “Every time they put a lock on, break it. And every time they pass a new law, break that. Sooner or later they're dealing with such a massive level of civil disobedience that they have to address it, and that’s where we're headed in a hell of a hurry.” Look at Silicon Valley’s Highway 280, where the legal speed is 65 mph but drivers average closer to 85, including police cars, Barlow said: “What are you going to do, arrest the entire highway?… People have asserted the freedom to drive as fast as they think is reliably safe under those circumstances, and we have to do the same thing.”
The FCC approved the AT&T/BellSouth merger, completing action Fri. with concurrence by Comrs. Adelstein and Copps. Staffers for the 2 Democrats negotiated a tough deal with AT&T to allow its merger with BellSouth. Most immediate reaction held that the order offered few surprises. Chmn. Martin and Comr. Tate questioned whether some conditions, especially on net neutrality, went too far. All 4 participating Commission members voiced reservations about the order.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied TiVo’s petition for a writ of certiorari in its suit against EchoStar. Full details of the petition, filed with the Court Oct. 3, weren’t available at our deadline. The denial Mon. is the latest legal turn in TiVo’s court battle with EchoStar. A federal jury in April awarded TiVo more than $74 million after finding that EchoStar marketed PVRs that infringed a patent covering technology used for pausing live TV and recording one show while watching another. A federal judge in Nov. rejected EchoStar’s motions for summary judgment and a new trial, setting the stage for appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, for proceedings that could take 12-18 months.
The Supreme Court Mon. denied TiVo’s petition for a writ of certiorari in its suit against EchoStar. Full details of the petition, filed with the Court Oct. 3, weren’t available at our deadline Mon. The denial is the latest legal wrangle in TiVo’s ongoing court battle with EchoStar. A federal jury in April awarded TiVo more than $74 million after finding that EchoStar marketed PVRs that infringed a patent covering technology used for pausing live TV and recording one show, while watching another. A federal judge in Nov. rejected EchoStar’s motions for summary judgement and a new trial, setting the stage for appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, a process that could take 12-18 months to resolve (CED Dec 8 p6).
TiVo will prevail in its ongoing court battle with EchoStar because its so-called “time-warp” patent is a “very difficult one to design around,” CEO Tom Rogers told the UBS conference in N.Y. Thurs. A federal jury in Tex. in April awarded TiVo more than $74 million after finding that EchoStar marketed PVRs that infringed a patent covering technology used for pausing live TV and recording one show while watching the other. A federal judge last month rejected EchoStar’s motions for summary judgement and new trial, setting the stage for appeal to the U.S. Appeals Court, Federal Circuit, a process that could take 12-18 months to resolve, Rogers said. EchoStar has about 4 million combo PVR/satellite receivers and every new model it sells represents a “rolling number” that could be added to a final damages award for patent infringement, Rogers said. TiVo has a portfolio of 80 patents, but the one covering time-warp technology has the broadest applications, Rogers said. TiVo also paid $10-$12 million in signing a cross-licensing agreement with IBM earlier this fall. TiVo’s focus in the future will be on dual-tuner PVRs and the single tuner model that’s being offered free after a $200 rebate is no longer a focus, Rogers said. Part of the reason for the rebate was to speed sell off of single-tuner inventory after the dual-tuner unit “caught on much quicker than we anticipated,” Rogers said. The dual-tuner Series2 PVRs, launched in April, accounted for 58% of TiVo’s 3rd-quarter revenue. “We'll see where we are post holidays, but it’s (the single tuner) not a SKU going forward that we're going to put much emphasis on,” Rogers said. TiVo Greater China (TGC), which sells PVRs in Taiwan and China, has generated a small amount of retail sales in Taiwan since launching earlier this year. TGC signed an agreement with MSO Eastern Multimedia in Taiwan earlier this month (CED Dec 5 p7) to sell a cable modem Internet access/PVR service. “Retail sales of boxes in Taiwan is not a significant number at this point,” Rogers said. TiVo also expects to begin public field trials with Comcast in early 2007, Rogers said. The trials will test burst downloading of TiVo software as an upgrade to Motorola set-top boxes. Internal Comcast engineering tests haven’t begun yet, he said. Comcast has about 3 million subscribers with PVR-equipped STBs.
EchoStar and DirecTV are again battling in the courtroom. EchoStar sued DirecTV in the U.S. Dist. Court, N.Y.C., seeking a ruling that it didn’t infringe trademarks by buying the rights to use expressions similar to “DirecTV” as keywords to trigger links to its own websites.
SAN FRANCISCO -- First-party PS3 game titles will be priced at $59.99, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) disclosed at a news briefing here late Thurs. The pricing marks a significant strategic shift for SCEA, which on previous systems priced its first-party titles $10 less.