Don’t Waste the Money
If I told you I was going to spend millions of pounds on a product that was unlikely to work and then pass that cost on to my customers, you would think I was mad, right?
But that is exactly what is happening with Digital Rights Management (DRM). Millions if not billions must be spent on DRM trying to protect digital media, which we the consumer pick up the tab for, and it doesn’t work!
Take music CDs for example. How much was spent trying to protect the music CD only for it to be a total waste of time and money and cause a consumer backlash when those CDs didn’t work in our HIFIs, cars and computers? And what about Sony’s notorious root kit? None of it worked and it was easy to circumvent the DRM protection for anybody who took the time to do a little research.
You would have though that somebody would have learnt a lesson by now, but still more money is poured down the drain.
DVDs have much the same story. Low cost and even free programs can be downloaded to copy DVD content. As fast as the industry comes up with new ways to protect their content, hackers find new ways to rip it.
And so the saga continues, now with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD which judging by current events, is going to be just as unsuccessful. If it can be made it can be broken, and it will! DRM will never work as long as it is seen as an unfair restriction. Note that most of the effort to crack movie DRM comes from Linux users who are disgruntled because the media won’t play on their machines. What does that tell you? Is it fair to provide content that some people can’t use even though they have hardware that does?
Someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of DRM but it isn’t the music or movie industry. It doesn’t benefit the consumer either, so what’s the point?
The next time somebody walks into your office telling you of their great software or device that can protect your content, be brave and tell them your not interested and instead spend the money on researching new ways for selling your content that pleases the consumer and actually makes you some money.
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 5th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I strongly agree with you, but if I was a musician or a movie director maybe I wouldn’t.
At the same time I think it’s not easy to find new ways to earn from rippable softwares: if one can choose between priced and free he normally choose the second.
May 5th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I couldn’t agree more.
Maybe one day they’ll invent something for preventing stuff like this, but in my opinion we’re very very far from that… but that’s just my opinion.
May 6th, 2007 at 3:18 am
I am a linux used I would never put up with a ANYTHING
that dosn’t respect my ownership of my computer
just because I have copy righted media on my computer
it dosen’t mean that the owner of the copy right has
more rights to my computer than I do
all sceems to enforce copy rights assumes that this enforcement over rides my right to control my computer
It’s a question of WHO’s computer is it that is plaing the media
this question more than any thing else is what has linux users pissed off at DRM
May 6th, 2007 at 11:34 am
It all seems a bit like King Canute sitting on his throne, on the sea shore, commanding the tide not to come in. He could no more control the sea than the industry can control their consumers.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t make money, they should, they are a business after all but there must be a better way without wasting obscene amounts of money and pissing off the consumer.
It just seems unfair to punish the average ‘honest’ person who legitimately want to use the media. We are not all pirates trying to rip them off! Most of us just want to have the right to play the stuff how we choose.
Here in the UK it is technically illegal to rip a CD I have bought into Mp3s to put on my Mp3 player - how mad is that?
May 8th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
@ainslie: In Italy we’ve got about the same law, but there’s a graduation of penal consequences between the “self-consumption” of downloaded software and the commercial purpose of download.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:40 am
Very well written. Couldn’t agree more.