1. Studios Using Digital Armor to Fight Piracy
   "Lying dormant in virtually every digital cable box in America is technology that can prevent viewers from recording certain programs to watch them later. Soon, several Hollywood studios are planning to tell cable operators to flip the switch. People who have become accustomed to recording pay-per-view and video-on-demand shows will probably still be able to, the studios say — so long as they pay an extra fee." [New York Times]
    
2. Satellite TV Orbits Closer to Cable
   "A percentage of customers leaving cable companies are turning to satellite TV providers, such as DirecTV, which grew at a "significantly higher (rate) than cable subscriber growth," the FCC said. The number of people subscribing to satellite TV companies increased from 19.3 million to 21.1 million, a 9 percent jump, during the first half of 2002, the report showed." [News.com]

1 definitely will not help stem 2, even though satellite TV users are not immune to this type of complete lockdown of content. Let's hope that everyone involved figures out that the people paying the bills are getting tired of all of this nonsense, especially in the absence of "a viable response to this problem."