WeaKnees is offering a $25,000 reward to the first hacker to figures out
how to improve the new DirecTV PVR.So, what's wrong with the DirecTV PVR, I hear you ask... well, the maximum hard drive capacity is limited, you can't add a second drive, you can't move content around, you can't move settings from one drive to another -- and the video content is crippled with digital rights management.
If you're up to the task, you can find out more at the WeaKnees blog.
Via: Boing Boing.
1. That's a fairly healthy sum for somethime people would try to do for free. Though for that kind of reward you will no doubt have more people trying harder.
Though I have to wonder if the person who succeeds at this isn't opening themselves up to lawsuits, or maybe eben criminal charges for violating the DMCA which makes it a crime in many (almost all) cases to break DRM, espcially if the breaking is done for non-personal reasons. Since we're talking about DirecTV here we already know they have a kennel full of lawyers ready to move to enforce the laws they and the content producers (RIAA/MPAA/etc.) paid congress to enact.
Indeed even Weeknees may potentially be at risk here by offering a reward, I wonder if they ran it by a lawer before they made the offer.
It's likely that DirecTV will have a response to the reward challenge and that will let anybody who is interested in taking up the challenge know what they may be opening up to.
It may be pretty slimy for DirecTV to go after people just for figuring out a way to upgrade the DVR they paid for but I wouldn't remotely put it past them and the U.S. Government has given them lots of tools to do so.
Of course if you don't like this, I suggest you join the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org) which is pretty much the only organization out there fighting for the digital rights of cunsumers.
Posted at 6:56PM on Dec 13th 2005 by Robert Aitchison