TiVo Selling Data on Users' Watching Habits

Gyppo writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that TiVo is collecting and selling data on what parts of broadcasts people are rewinding for review and what commercials they are skipping. The data collection is part of a service the company provides to advertisers and television networks, collecting anonymous data on their users' commercial-watching habits. The data they provide is a random subset of their overall userbase, detailing which commercials are skipped and which are actually watched. The article mentions the possibility for privacy abuse, but with this application of technology Tivo is not providing access to what any one individual user watches via the service."

Old news?

[norminator]

Didn't we know this back when the whole Janet Jackson/Super Bowl thing happened? Maybe this is running today in honor of the anniversary of that.

Thank goodness for my MythTV box.

Bad Data

[Jethro]

I don't know if this is the same with standalone TiVos, but my DirecTV TiVo box is always on, and always 'recording' two channels. Which means there's pretty much 24 hours a day of stuff I'm watching without skipping anything, plus stuff I am watching and skipping.

Now, they could be ignoring Live TV, but... then they're ignoring when people watch live TV, which I think would be fairly important to advertisers.

Personally I don't care if TiVo (or DirecTV) collect viewing habits, as long as they remain anonymous. I just don't think it's accurate at all.

Old news

[milesy20]

TiVo has long since confirmed this was a practice since delivering that Janet Jackson's infamous Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" was the most replayed event in TiVo history.

OpenCable

[Doc Ruby]

A court just blew the cableTV proprietary platform bundle wide open: TV decoders are now open to outside vendors/deployers [kagan.com], starting July 1, 2007. That means that complete "cable cards" will become much cheaper, and that really cheap HW will send the raw data to PCs to be decoded in SW, which can be F/OSS.

The cable TV network just became a lot more like an internet, and the Internet just became a lot more like a TV network. For those working on it ourselves, anyway.

So when does MythTV make TiVo look like the Web made AOL look?

An idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we do this with MythTV, on a voluntary basis, but WE get the cash?

I

[denbesten]

Tivo must make three groups happy: Stockholders, Customers and Broadcasters. It seems like collecting and selling statistical information can't help but to improve the mood for the least-happy group -- the broadcasters. Having a way to easily survey 20,000 random households to determine which super bowl ads were the most liked (e.g. played more than once per Tivo), determining if people are skipping or watching opening credits to shows, and determining how many people "bail out" in the middle of a new show are all feedback that may help the broadcasters learn that Tivo is not all evil. As a customer, my biggest privacy concerns are addressed by their Privacy Policy [tivo.com], which clearly states that nothing personally identifiable is collected and that they have an opt-out option for even the anonymous stuff. To make me a really happy customer, I wish that they would return the life-time subscription (even if only available to broadband customers) and that they would figure out how to turn a profit, so that I can be sure that my current Tivo does not someday turn into a boat anchor.

Amazing how you are all missing the point - HRM

[unassimilatible]

That stands for Hardware Rights Management. TiVos (series 2 and above) are paperweights without this endless subscription "service." As much crap as everyone here gives Microsoft, at least Linux is an option to make PC hardware bundled with Windows operable. TiVos are so locked down via hardware that they are virtually uncrackable and useless without the TiVo extortion payments. Go on the TiVo forums, and all the sheep there call you a thief for merely wanting to use your TiVo without the "service," even as a push-to-record DVR. TiVo has all the sheep fooled into thinking their eternal fees are justified for the privilege of using hardware that the end user bought and owns! Imagine if Microsoft - or GM - tried locking up your hardware (including locking out linux) if you didn't pay an eternal license fee!

Re:And why am I not surprised?

[numbski]

I honstely am not sure why anyone cares.

1. They aren't targeting individuals.
2. We already know what the report says:

"Sweet Christ! They're skipping them all!!!1111"

Speaking With Actual Knowledge About the Subject!

[wahini]

As someone who has owned a Tivo since about 6 months after they first came out. I was told from day one that they would collect data anonymously on me IF I did not opt-out. Now, I thought very seriously about this issue at the time. I normally opt-out of this kind of stuff but Tivo is one of the LEADING examples of hacker friendly companies selling consumer electronics products. I decided that I wanted to support their business plan since thanks to their hacker friendly policies I was able to upgrade my tiny 14 hr Tivo to an 80+ hour Tivo by myself. At any time before, now, or in the future Tivo could download code to detect and disable my hacked Tivo but they don't because they think differently than 99% of the other companies out there! I think they deserve some F***ING RESPECT & SUPPORT for being a company that is hacker friendly.

Remember this is not Sony root-kitting your PC, this is Tivo letting you hack the system they sold you. Not only that, I can only think of ONE other company (Garmin for my GPS) that continues to give me both bug fixes and actual enhancements to a product which is so old. I happen to have a lifetime subscription to Tivo, back from day one, when it only cost $150 and the only money they have made off of me since is from this anonymous data that I voluntarily allow them to collect! Tivo astonishingly, given the quality of their product and hacker tolerant policies, still isn't a highly profitable company. Maybe, the other 99% of the companies have it right economically - screw the hackers - but I think we should give credit to those who dare to challenge the established ways of treating customers. Suing your customers and root-kitting their computers is what we should be opposing not collecting anonymous data with full disclosure and an opt-out option.

OMG! They're trying to make money!

[JacksBrokenCode]

Tivo isn't talking about all the people who forked over cash for Tivos and pay an over inflated monthly subscription.

If you chose to go with MythTV or Freevo instead of TiVo, your hardware cost will probably be much higher than an off-the-shelf TiVo unit. So yes, TiVo customers have "forked over cash" but they probably forked over less cash than they would have for an alternative system.

As for the subscription price being "over inflated": $13 per month is just under $.45 per day. Is 2 quarters a day really an over-inflated price for a service that automates recording my favorite shows and allows me to fast-forward commercials that I don't want to watch? (Usage data will reveal that I tend to watch the Geico "cavemen" commercials.) Yes, that's infinite magnitudes more expensive than a free service like XMLTV but realistically it's not a horribly expensive amount to pay. If you can't spare $.45/day then you probably can't afford a PVR to begin with.

Yes, I'm a TiVo user and I'm quite content with the service and the price. At the end of the day I don't care if they look at my usage habits because I hope that the companies will finally realize which ads suck-ass. If the big-brother syndrome gets to the point where someday a company won't hire me because The Great Database says I watched too much Aqua Teen and not enough CSPAN... I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Re:Not surprising.

[Babbster]

The counter-argument to that (not one I subscribe to, just advocating the devil) is that you're censoring yourself because people are not, or may not be, respecting your privacy. For example, if you know that your next-door neighbors love spy gadgets - especially their parabolic microphone - then you may not say what you really think of them on your own property, for fear that they'll hear and go Bakersfield Chimp on you.

Personally, I'm in favor of Tivo going this route for the simple fact that it's extremely unlikely I'll ever be hooked up to Nielsen's TV rating service and I'd like for TV networks to base their decisions on the largest sample set possible. For example, maybe a huge portion of people with Tivos watch Battlestar Galactica but, in a statistical fluke, almost nobody who has a Nielsen hookup does. In that situation, if Tivo doesn't sell their data to NBC/Universal, maybe BSG gets cancelled when as few as 100,000 more viewers - represented by the addition of Tivo's data - could have saved the show.

Re:Note who Tivo considers its "clients" to be...

[Babbster]

What bothers me about TiVo is that they are in a conflict-of-interest situation. They have people buying TiVos (and subscriptions) on the one hand, and they have advertisers and media companies on the other. Let's face it: the needs and wants of the two groups are not usually aligned.

Why aren't they? ABC, NBC, TNT, etc. need to know which of their shows are being watched, and I want them to know what I'm watching so that they'll keep showing my programs. Those needs seem to line up nicely. Even selling my commercial skipping data could be useful to me AND them because I might watch more commercials if I find them entertaining (like the Geico caveman commercials - that primitive is a crack-up!).

As long as the process is transparent to me, and I don't suddenly start getting phone calls from, say, Geico because they "heard" I liked their commercials, I'm perfectly fine with Tivo selling my viewing habits. Maybe some shows that I like will stay on the air longer because the cancellation decisions are based on bigger, more accurate sample sets...