Golden Goose Genocide: Hollywood Guns for DVRed PPV

Broadband Reports is carrying a story this morning detailing a new policy that DirecTV will be imposing on customers who record pay-per-view programming via the company's DVRs:

DirecTV users tell us that the satellite provider has sent them an e-mail saying that effective April 15, DVR recordings of pay-per-view films will only be available for 24 hours after purchase. Apparently users who like to watch films over a few day span will be out of luck. Not exactly the smartest move from an industry that's keen to put a dent in piracy by offering a robust, consumer-friendly product. From DirecTV's website:

Effective April 15, 2008, DVR recordings of PPV movies will be available for 24 hours of unlimited viewing after purchase. Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours. During the 24 hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind.

It seems clear that Hollywood has completely lost any sense of proportionality and is determined to alienate paying customers through any and all of the substantial means at its disposal. There can be no logical rationalization for this sort of draconian measure, particularly after a customer has paid for a program he plans to view later. Why should the owner of the content care how long the recording program sits there prior to viewing? Or even if it's viewed hundreds of times before being deleted?

Does anyone really believe this is going to enhance sales or revenues of "protected" content?

It's news like this that makes me want to stand up and applaud when a company defeats Blu-ray's BD+ DRM less than 6 months after its rollout, particularly after some leading security experts estimated that it would take at least 10 years to crack BD+.

The bigger the target, the bigger the effort that will be undertaken to obliterate it.

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