My dangerous idea.

[steve_bryan@m...]

Here is a related idea that I suspect might be feasible sooner. Apple
maintains an open source project for its QuickTime Streaming Server
which runs on many platforms including NT, linux, OSX (to be explicit
this is free as in open source and free as in beer). These will be
capable of streaming MPEG2 content to the QuickTime Player app that
is available for the various flavors of Windows, Mac OS classic, and
Mac OSX. So you set up a gnutella network of TiVo boxes. When you
return a match then you include metadata that indicates the RTSP
protocol url that causes the program to be streamed. With enough
bandwidth and a large enough group of friends (say your closest
100,000 or so friends) you would be completely free of the tyranny of
schedule for recently broadcasted content.

As far as what is legal and what is illegal please note that the
copyright industry has had carte blanche for essentially the entire
20th century to write the law as they saw fit no matter how
convoluted or illogical it became. Now that the digital revolution
has given all of us a stake in how such laws are crafted we might
hope that something corresponding to what people expect the law to be
already (logical, coherent, fair) will become the law. Take a look at
Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright."

--- In ExtractStream@y..., "Scott Siegel" <sunyscott@y...> wrote:
> Does this enable users (not on sorphin's TiVo, lets just say a
hypothetical)
> to log in and have access to recorded programs? Is it possible to
network
> TiVo's together so that you could view and play recorded programs
off of
> others on this network, like a PC network? Because if someone knew
how to
> write software to create an "internet" of TiVo machines, one could
> technically download and view programs from around the world, and
> technically save the data stream to a PC for future archive, lets
say as an
> MPEG-2 or as DivX as previously mentioned.
> 
> If this sounds like a possibility (and why not, if the tivo's are
computers
> and have network cards so it should be possible) TiVo users could
create
> networks of their TiVo's and perhaps Linux systems to help run an
interface
> (e.g. a program or interface on a networked linux system which
could copy
> from timmy's tivo device at ip x to my tivo device at ip y) which
would
> enable people without cable to have access to a variety of
programming (i
> have directv and my girlfriend makes me subscribe to almost every
program
> option, so this isnt my motivation) or people living in different
regions to
> have access to local programming across the globe. Additionally,
if you
> miss a program (conflicts) there is a good possibility that someone
else
> would have recorded it and you could grab a copy of it. Oh, and
another
> thought... with so many people hacking their boxes to expand the
max
> recording time to 200 hrs. i'm sure most people have the space to
store a
> week or two worth of select programming. This creates a Napster
like
> network where you could search the network for archived programs
and elect
> to save them to disk. Also, if the network was constructed, you
could use
> removable drives in the linux system to archive older programs
making
> accessable to requests in the future.
> 
> Just a few ideas, none of which I imagine are legal, but hey, this
is a
> forum, so I though I'd ask to see if this was possible or if it is
out of
> reach...
>