With every advance in technology the same group of copyright owners show up to prove that they don’t understand or
care about their customers by trying to block technology that ultimately makes them more money. VCRs, DAT, MP3, TiVO, P2P all were
greeted with lawsuits. DAT was effectively killed by a combination of the threat of legal action, the DAT-Tax and, of course, the recordable CD. Napster was neutered. Now the litigous folks in Hollywood have turned their attentions to Cablevisions network based DVR service.
If you haven’t heard of this threat to innovation, you can start your reading with a recent eff article.

Cablevision’s service allows you to have all the functions of a DVR without the requirement of the HDD enabled set top box. Instead, the programs you choose are recorded by a device in Cablevision’s network for you. This is a great service for a few reasons. It’s lower cost, programs can become portable, and frankly who needs yet another box.

Not everyone is a television junky, so you may not feel the need for a DVR in the cloud, but this type of restrictive legal action threatens the innovation in our industry. Please check it out and make your opinion known.