Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine)
Fred Trotter
discusses
the Tivoization of health care data in a Free Software Magazine article.
"Well, consider what would happen if my software and the operating system underneath it were Tivoized. I help write an GPL Electronic Health Record (EHR). Under the current version of the GPL, someone could make an appliance from my software and GNU/Linux and prevent people from modifying and controlling healthcare data stored in the Electronic Health Record that ran on this device. What the Tivoization traps is the data, which for Tivo means movies and television shows recorded digitally. But what happens when the data that is trapped is infinitely more valuable? When we discuss DRM, we should be thinking of an EHR that has been Tivoized, (perhaps a health-Tivo) rather than a television recording device."
(Log in to post comments)
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 15, 2007 22:20 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Of course if such GPL'd software were available it could be put on another box and Dr's would go with the lower cost solution (the one without the DRM). On the other hand, the DRM may be placed there by laws that cover the security of health data.. which point the law would over-ride the parts of the GPL that said you couldn't use the software with DRM.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 15, 2007 22:35 UTC (Mon) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] which point the law would over-ride the parts of the GPL that said you couldn't use the software with DRM It's called expropriation. GPL can not forbid the DRM. GPL can easily forbid usage of the software in DRM-crippled device. Otherwise the whole point of copyright becomes moot: if the goverment and not copyright owner decides if it's possible to use this or that piece of software with certain device then what's the point of copyright ?
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 15, 2007 22:47 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] To protect your 'copy-right' from other people. The government is always a special case because it gets to write the rules that you have.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 9:44 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Indeed. Copyright is an artificial *government-imposed* (theoretically) temporary monopoly, just as patents are. There's nothing innate about it.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 10:16 UTC (Tue) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link] In the U.S., the point of copyright is promote the production of more useful work. It is not to give 100% control to authors. The govt might decide that the country is better off if copyright holders cannot restrict the type of devices on which the copies are loaded/run. Highly unlikely but again, the point of copyright is _not_ to give 100% control to the cpyright owner.
as a service provider Posted Jan 15, 2007 22:41 UTC (Mon) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] I provide web-based applications. The user's data sits on my machines. The moral ground is two:
1) protect the user's data - make sure it's backed up and never, never let anyone else have access to it.
2) if the user should ever want a dump of his data for any reason, whether for his own analysis or to switch vendors, he will have a complete data set within a reasonable con and within a reasonable timeframe.
any client who agrees to anything less is stupid or compromised.
that is Posted Jan 15, 2007 22:44 UTC (Mon) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] "reasonable cost" - as versus reasonable con
(would be nice to be able to edit emails or am I being stupid?)
as a service provider Posted Jan 16, 2007 12:47 UTC (Tue) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] But even that may not be sufficient.Oftentimes, even if you get a complete database-dump with all your data in it in a timely fashion and for a reasonable cost, it can still be cost-ineffective to swap vendors. Massaging data from one format to another ain't free. Under many circumstances it's completely cost-prohibitive.
but what's an option? Posted Jan 17, 2007 0:23 UTC (Wed) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] I'm offering clients a solution they could not afford themselves. For them to do this in-house is prohibitive.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 0:51 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] Technically "tivoization" means taking your TV shows or other media and making them available at a later date.
It helps if everyone uses words correctly.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 1:50 UTC (Tue) by sholdowa (guest, #34811) [Link] Umm... not really. From wikipedia:
"Tivoization is the creation of a system that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license, but uses hardware to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman, creator of the copyleft GNU General Public License (GPL), coined the term and believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GPL was designed to protect.
The term came about in reference to TiVo's use of GPL software on TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR). TiVo's software incorporates the Linux kernel and parts of GNU, both of which are licensed under the GPL Version 2 (GPL v.2). The GPL v.2 requires TiVo to release the associated source code for others to use and modify. One of the goals of this GPL requirement is to allow others to modify the software to better suit their purposes."
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 4:14 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] I guess it's a hacker vs cracker thing. Trust me, if you talk about things getting TiVOized everything in the real world thinks it's about time shifting media.
I don't know why people pick on TiVO when they could just set up a MythTV box. Probably it comes from a mix of laziness and jealousy.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 13:45 UTC (Tue) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] I personally use and love mythtv and would use nothing else, but it is still not an easy thing to set up for most people. Hopefully it will get there one day, but right now a Tivo is just a lot easier.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 19:45 UTC (Tue) by sholdowa (guest, #34811) [Link] I think RMS should have the last say, seeing as he invented the concept. TiVo is NOT just about a PVR, it is far more specifically about the way it 'uses' GPL
Don't you mean "Betamaxization"! Posted Jan 16, 2007 6:47 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] The only specific term I've ever seen for this is "time-shifting". Ofcourse we always used to say "taping" or "recording", and the latter is still accurate.
I've never, ever heard the brand-name of a particular piece of recording
It's been verbed, but not verbized... Posted Jan 16, 2007 15:39 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Actually, the use of "TiVoed" or "TiVoing" is pretty common ("I was out last night, so I TiVoed the second two hours of 24.").
I don't think I've ever heard "tivoize" used except in the sense that the FSF uses it, to mean locking hardware against software updates.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 8:30 UTC (Tue) by sean.hunter (guest, #7920) [Link] This analogy is poor because there are all sorts of legitimate reasons to prevent people to access or alter healthcare data. If I wrote a GPL Electronic Health Record I would not necessarily think that it would automatically be bad for someone to make a device that contained my code but prevented people from modifying the data. In fact I would not want to prevent that use of my code at all.
Secondly the credibility of the central argument of this article is compromised by using Richard Stallman-invented terms such as "Tivoization". It would be far more persuasive if the author argued using real English and argued the question purely on its merits.
For my part, I am far from convinced of the need for a GPLv3, and neither the prosetylising of the FSF nor this article have persuaded me. If anything, they are making it less likely that I will ever adopt the GPLv3 or the "or any later version" clause for any free software I write.
The people who write free and open source software do not subscribe to a single world-view, and the FSF certainly doesn't speak for everyone.
Tivo Healthcare (Free Software Magazine) Posted Jan 16, 2007 15:47 UTC (Tue) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] "If I wrote a GPL Electronic Health Record I would not necessarily think that it would automatically be bad for someone to make a device that contained my code but prevented people from modifying the data. In fact I would not want to prevent that use of my code at all."
You probably should. If the device maker prevented the people who were supposed to be able to properly change the data from being able to do so. I think that is what is under discussion.
Of course it is fine to prevent people who are not supposed to change the data from changing it and to prevent data that is not supposed to be changed from being changed. The problem is with preventing people who are supposed to be able to change data that is supposed to be able to be changed from changing that data.
I would appreciate your further input.
all the best,
drew
Very muddled article Posted Jan 16, 2007 10:10 UTC (Tue) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link] GPL V3 "Tivoization" is about the right to run your modified *program*.This article is about the problems if you foolishly sign away the rights to your *data*. And there's no need for DRM to sign away data rights, simple access controls will do it.
|
|
||||||||||||