Score another one for the clueless! Kissing the Clueless, or how DRM killed the video star
The headline screams — Another movie studio offers movie downloads! What it whispers is “another movie studio offers movie downloads you can purchase and view if you have the right operating system version and are using the right web browser.
Effectively rendering the service useless.
Warner Bros. sells films via Guba.com – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES – Warner Bros. began selling its movies and TV shows over the Internet video site Guba.com Monday, marking the second deal the studio has made to distribute content over Web sites that have offered pirated video in the past.
I wrote some thoughts about DRM recently and they are spot on — I don’t want DRM.
Why I Do Not Want DRM
I want to own, actually own the material I purchase. Like a book.
If you encumber your content with DRM you effectively are leasing the content to me and have changed the business relationship to a space I don’t care to be in with you. I want to buy a copy for my personal use. I want to use that copy in whatever manner I choose.
If you encumber my copy with DRM you have killed my ownership. You can turn off access to this at anytime in the future (provided I haven’t circumvented your DRM scheme and made an analog backup).
The DRM scheme can be made obsolete. I can still view maps printed in 1600, or those hand drawn in 1400, even earlier. I can listen to records made in 1940 provided I maintain some equipment. The trouble with your DRM, and this includes the nicer DRM from iTunes and the Windows Media 10 DRM, is that there is NO WAY possible for me to maintain equipment that allows me access to content I purchase from you 50 years from now. I have to authenticate machines to play the content I buy, er lease from you. You decide where I play it, how I play it and for how long.
That is why I do not want your DRM. Just say no to DRM.
August 18th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
[…] It’s an insane idea. For some reason the tech media and now Jupiter analysts have a feeding frenzy anytime they can wedge a so-called “iPod Killer” into their world view. I don’t care two shakes about iPod dominance (i took my profits on AAPL) but it is the best product out there and provides much better user to music interface AND user to paid digital content than anything else on the market. Plus, I can still buy CDs, which I do because I’ll never saddle myself with content I have paid for but am not allowed to actually own. I have explained my dislike of DRM in the past. […]