The new TiVo Series 3 is outPretty much ho-hum; it’s not selling all that well, and there are some significant bugs in it. Widely reported, widely ignored. But Cory Doctorow, boingboing‘s resident anti-DRM pit bull, ramps up the anti-DRM rhetoric to a new level:

The Macrovision DRM in the new TiVo Series3 recorders is so broken that just having the wrong piece of equipment attached to your TV can cause it to register some shows as un-savable to your VCR, DVD recorder, etc. TiVo characterizes this as a glitch, but that’s not the whole story.

It is a glitch, and they’re working to fix it. But wait, he foams some more:

It’s like those movies where an accident or a bad guy triggers the “self-destruct button” on a spaceship. Often the self-destruct button is locked away behind plexiglas and padlocks for safety, but wouldn’t it be safer not to include a single command that blows up the whole space-ship? […] Wouldn’t it be better if TiVo didn’t build in any technology that attacks its customers?

Well, yuh, it would be good. We get it…. “DRM is Evil.” But you want TiVo to ignore it? They’d be sued out of existence in about two minutes. Remember ReplayTV? The people who own the content want DRM. Blaming TiVo for that– and all the other faults of the MPAA and other industry groups– is just silly. Vote with your wallet– if you think the DRM outweighs the usefulness of TiVo, don’t buy it.

Cory, you write great fiction. Maybe you should stick to what you’re good at.