February 12, 2002
Be careful what you watch ...
When you've got teenagers, as (like?) I do, you can expect constant lobbying to buy the hottest electronics. And one burning request still in the hopper is TiVo.
TiVo bills itself as the "creator of and undisputed leader in television services for digital video recorders." That means they provide a service to units in your home that are a whole lot like your VCR, except there's no tape. Instead, there's a hard disk. It's not a VCR; it's a DVR - a digital video recorder.
Now, I've managed to put my kids off, but I have a number of adult friends who couldn't resist. No more messing around with videotapes, or having to rewind. And they can replay anything right on the spot, without missing a thing. Their DVR continues to record what's airing, and lets them catch up later.
Who would doubt this is "couch potato heaven?"
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What I didn't quite understand about this service was that once a day, your DVR calls into TiVo to download the latest catalog of programs. And guess what? It sends data about you back up the line.
How do I know that? Well, TiVo has just published its first-ever analysis of replay behavior during the recent Super Bowl game, and they used a random pool of 10,000 subscribers.
Put aside for a moment the fact that both Britney Spears Pepsi commercials beat out all the replays of any actual football, including the last minute game-winning field goal.
The point is - they can watch what we watch.
Why just the other day, I got home, sat down and hit the remote control. Before the picture even came on the screen, the telephone rang. So, I pressed mute and forty minutes later, I looked up to realize what I'd been watching ... well, does it matter what I'd been watching?
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I think we're right at the edge of getting in trouble here.
Can we introduce evidence at trial that a person fed his violent tendencies with a steady diet of serial killer movies? Can it be argued that we're bad parents because X-rated fare played during the day when our small children were up and about?
The difficulty here is that TiVo, and others like them, base part of their business model on being able to sell solid information on the precise habits of viewers.
Will Pepsi be charged more money if their ad gets played again and again? Or refunded money, if it doesn't? And what about poor Britney? Isn't she entitled to be compensated?
While we're assured that the anonymity of subscribers is protected, I, for one, am not assured at all. For starters, they're no law concerning all this. And for another, there's a whole lot of money involved.
You know, we have only George W. Bush's word that he was watching a football game when he choked on that pretzel. And as far as I'm concerned, it should stay that way. What if he had TiVo during the Super Bowl and really got into Britney Spears? And what if we surmise from his replays that he's really a Rams' fan, when everybody knows a President ought be a patriot?
It's both that silly, and that serious.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
