TiVo users fear Hollywood machine

Associated Press: TiVo Users Fear Hollywood Machine. Excerpt:

Many fans of digital video recorders made by TiVo Inc. are beginning to fear that Hollywood studios will one day reach into their set-top boxes to restrict the way they record and store movies and programs.

Among the functions included in TiVo's latest software upgrade is the ability to allow broadcasters to erase material recorded by TiVo's 3.6 million users after a certain date. That ability was demonstrated recently when some TiVo customers complained on TiVo community sites that episodes of "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" they recorded were "red-flagged" for deletion by the copyright holder.

Some users also were upset that they were prevented from transferring these red-flagged shows to a PC via the TiVoToGo service.

Elliot Sloan, a TiVo spokesman, called the red-flag incident a "glitch" and said it affected only a handful of customers. "It's a non-story," Sloan said.

Nonetheless, skeptics among TiVo users questioned why TiVo would own such a technology unless the company planned to one day use it.

TiVo and other digital video recorders let users skip commercials and jump around a recording quickly. Since TiVo introduced its DVR in the late 1990s, customers have enjoyed the ability to record anything they want, and store it indefinitely.

But last year, TiVo quietly disclosed that it would employ copyright-protection software from Macrovision Corp. for pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. According to a post on TiVo's Web site, the software allows broadcasters to restrict how long a DVR can save certain recordings or in some cases prevent someone from recording altogether.

"Program providers decide what programs will have Macrovision copy protection," said the TiVo post. ...