Is DVR Technology Pushing The Legal Limits?

Feb. 3, 2003

As technology steamrolls on, it challenges the legal boundaries of copyright protection. We all know what happened to Napster: The music industry threw a lawsuit against the startup for enabling Internet users to freely swap audio recordings through its server. Lawyers swung into action, cease and desist orders flooded the mail, and Napster was forced to change its business model. And now Napster is in bankruptcy. The furor over digital video disks (DVDs) created a similar outcome over the legality of swapping movies via the Internet. Hollywood stopped that too, with Congress passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Incidentally, the DMCA doesn't specifically address digital video recorders (DVRs).

Could DVRs expect the same? After all, 29 media companies sued SONICblue after it introduced its ReplayTV DVR at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show—right next to TiVo's introduction. The media companies claimed that the resulting TV-show swapping capability over the Internet using ReplayTV was illegal. Strangely, the media companies haven't sued other DVR makers like TiVo and Microsoft (with its Home Media Center). Interestingly, media giants like CBS and NBC are among TiVo's investors. Perhaps media companies have accepted the fact that technology must go forward and that they must adapt to viewers' changing habits. Furthermore, hackers have already made available software that allows DVR users to take compressed copies of TV shows and swap them on the Internet. As they say in Hollywood, the show must go on.

About the Author

Roger Allan

Roger Allan is an electronics journalism veteran, and served as Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors, components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military electronics, robotics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics technologies. He is a contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science. Roger has worked for major electronics magazines besides Electronic Design, including the IEEE Spectrum, Electronics, EDN, Electronic Products, and the British New Scientist. He also has working experience in the electronics industry as a design engineer in filters, power supplies and control systems.

After his retirement from Electronic Design Magazine, He has been extensively contributing articles for Penton’s Electronic Design, Power Electronics Technology, Energy Efficiency and Technology (EE&T) and Microwaves RF Magazine, covering all of the aforementioned electronics segments as well as energy efficiency, harvesting and related technologies. He has also contributed articles to other electronics technology magazines worldwide.

He is a “jack of all trades and a master in leading-edge technologies” like MEMS, nanolectronics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, military electronics, biometrics, implantable medical devices, and energy harvesting and related technologies.