DirecTV DVR owners got some bad news from the satellite TV provider recently when the company announced that it will break some of the existing functionality of the DVRs. Effective April 15, subscribers will only have 24 hours to watch pay-per-view movies recorded to their DVRs. Once the movies are purchased, the clock starts ticking, and after 24 hours, the PPV movie saved to your DVR will become nothing more than an unreadable collection of zeros and ones.

In its announcement, the company laid the blame for the new policy at the feet of Big Content. "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," reads the announcement. "During the 24-hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind."

PPV special events like sporting events and PPV movies purchased prior to April 15 are not affected by the new policy.

DRM isn't dying in the world of video

While extremely disappointing, the move is not all that surprising. DirecTV and the movie studios will argue that the new policy is in line with online rental services such the iTunes Store and Xbox Live. Both of them offer high-definition movie rentals with a limited viewing window. In the case of the Apple TV and iTunes content, viewers have 30 days to start watching the movie and 24 hours to finish watching once they hit play for the first time. But DirecTV is taking away something that its customers are used to having: unlimited time to watch their rentals. And unsurprisingly, these new restrictions don't come with lower prices.

Back in 2005, a handful of TiVo owners were upset to find that some of the programming on their DVRs was being deleted due to what turned out to be a content restriction bug. That's all it was, a bug, but it served as an unnerving reminder that the programming stored on our DVRs may not always be under our full control. With cable and satellite companies generally providing both the programming and the DVRs, they ultimately have tremendous power to control what subscribers do with the shows they record.

DirecTV's move, whether forced by the studios are not, is another indication of what DRM is really all about: the ability to strictly control how we consume content, not fighting piracy. How does reducing the window of viewing fight piracy? It doesn't! In fact, it only encourages it.

Content stored on a DirecTV DVR is locked down tighter than a SuperMax prison after visiting hours, so piracy doesn't even enter the equation here. What the move is intended to do is drive additional rentals and protect DVD and Blu-ray sales. By limiting the PPV window to 24 hours, DirecTV and the studios can prevent customers from indefinitely storing movies for repeated viewing. So if you want to watch that Hollywood blockbuster after the 24-hour PPV windows expires, you'll have to reorder it, head down to the video rental shop (brick and mortar or online), or buy physical media. If you want to watch it twice, you'll have to pay twice.

Or, you'll do what millions already do, and go straight to BitTorrent.

The move is another indication of Big Content's shortsightedness when it comes to competing with piracy. Like it or not, they still have to compete with free. DVRs are great for that, because they save content in a format that's easy to use and can be watched on the device of choice (your TV). Now, DirecTV and Big Content are crippling the DVR, meaning that people who want to recapture the convenience and control over the content will have to turn to BitTorrent and USENET. Meanwhile, was it much of a threat that people would build giant movie collections on their DVRs? We don't think so. Even a hacked TiVo is easy to fill up with new shows and new content.

What's also worrisome is that this DRM is meant to mark the beginning of a whole new world of content restriction. Imagine if the same restriction was applied to premium programming like that from HBO. Worse, for parents of small children (like me) who squirrel away copies of Disney programming on their DVRs for a rainy day, what if that copy of Fox and the Hound that we recorded a month ago suddenly became unplayable? It's not outside the realm of possibility... and there's little stopping satellite and cable programmers from doing it.

But the move will drive piracy, as many readers pointed out when they wrote in complaining about this story. Hollywood will act surprised, but there's no way they can be.

Full disclosure: I'm a DirecTV DVR owner.

Further reading