Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Hollywood is increasingly using one old technique that industries that can no longer compete do: they get laws passed to stifle the competition.

In this case I'm talking about TiVo's (TIVO) new Series3 HD model. It does have one strength that TV watchers will really like - the ability to record high definition programs.

Now the bad news: It won't come with TiVoToGo. For those of you that don't TiVo, TiVoToGo enables consumers to record programs and then transfer them to other devices or burn them to DVDs.

Concerning using the law, with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress in 1998, it restricts companies from building products that receive digital content without DRM restrictions in place. A company must get permission to build it.

Guess who runs the so-called nonprofit organization that makes those decisions? The cable companies! The organization called Cable Research Laboratories, or CableLabs has the decision-making power to decide these issues.

Here's the bottom line in this: Hollywood can no longer compete.

Derek Slater, a rep for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that examines the digital rights of consumers, says, "Hollywood has continually tried to rein in consumer freedom through its support of more restrictive, less useful devices, I am sure that TiVo is working with CableLabs to get some sort of feature approved, but it will not be the TiVoToGo that consumers have known and loved."

CableLabs says that TiVo hasn't brought anything to them to look at. The point is that they shouldn't have to do it in the first place.

A spokesman for TiVo said, "...We are currently working with CableLabs on several technologies centered around moving content around the home environment."

With the consumer increasingly becoming the decider of what and how they want to consumer media, for Hollywood to continually stand in the way and restrict their wishes is a boot-in-the-face to people. If they can't offer the product and means of transmission that consumers want, then they need to step aside and get out of the way of those that do.