Salon

Replay it again, Sam


Personal video recorders already have Hollywood running scared. Now Microsoft is pushing a new computer that will make trading TV shows as easy as using ... Napster. "Like Mr. Ed," says Craig Newmark, "I never speak until I have something to say." It's a crisp fall morning in San Francisco, and Newmark, sipping coffee at his neighborhood cafe, is in the middle of a long discussion of the ethics involved in watching television. He's invoked TV's talking horse to explain his fight with TV's fat cats: He's suing the media companies whose executives have been calling people like him -- people who use personal video recorders, or PVRs, such as TiVo and ReplayTV -- "thieves."