Consumers risk having their TV shows and movies automatically erased by their DVR

Fox News
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.

The ability was demonstrated recently when some of TiVo's customers complained on TiVo community sites that episodes of "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" they recorded were "red flag" for deletion by the copyright holder.

Elliott Sloan, a TiVo spokesman, called the red flag incident in a "glitch" and said it only affected a handful of customers. "It's a nonstory." Sloan said.

Last year TiVo quietly disclose that it would employ copyright protection software for Macrovision Corp. for pay-per-view and video demand programs


Copyright laws nowadays are becoming so confusing, it's hard to keep track of what you are legally allowed to do, so I am not going to touch on that right now.

However, one thing that I definitely do not like is my equipment taking control of itself in deciding what I can and cannot do with it.

For example, and I will admit that I do not rent movies that often however a couple weeks ago when I rented a couple titles on DVD I got a very interesting surprise.

When I tried to fast-forward through the FBI warning to get to the movie, my player refused to respond to my command. This happened with all three movies that I was playing and I only got control of the player after the movie started.

The only option that I had available to me was to turn the power off.

I was not even aware that my player had such technology that would allow the DVD to control its functions in this manner and needless to say I was not overly thrilled by the prospect.