Cory Doctorow, a spokesperson and activist for the EFF, gave quite a convincing argument to Microsoft at their Redmond headquarters last yeat, discussing restrive digital rights management and why it's an all-around negative thing for everyone concerned. Here's a teaser from Cory's presentation: Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr! I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM. Here's what I'm here to convince you of: 1. That DRM systems don't work 2. That DRM systems are bad for society 3. That DRM systems are bad for business 4. That DRM systems are bad for artists 5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT Mr. Doctorow's DRM talk is one of the most interesting, insightful, and well-worded I've seen to date. Even though it's not exactly news, having been published in June of '04, it's well worth the read. The only pity is that Microsoft went ahead with their heavy-handed DRM schemes anyway. Please feel free to share your own opinions after you've read this informative article.
I wouldn't place the blame so much on MS as I would the MPAA and the RIAA. MS wants a part of the royalties associated with the next generation of video, in order to do so they have to give into the MPAA or risk being shut out of even having their codec considered in future discussions. Microsoft is a company that is here to make money and to keep shareholders happy. If your a shareholder and you found out the company just lost billions in revenue, chances are your going to be upset. MS is just implementing what every CE company is going to have to do with their HD-DVD/Blueray players. Studios are forcing users who have purchased 17 billion on HDTV's to have to buy new sets in order to watch the next generation discs in HD, so instead of complaining about companies who are pretty much being forced to implement it I'd be upset at the companies forcing this change.
As for me, I'll place the blame on anyone who has the power to change things, but refuses. The customer (i.e. you and I) are the ones getting screwed, and that's cool with MS. Not OK. I realize that the **AA's are ultimately the ones to blame, and for that reason I don't buy their products (nor do I pirate them - total boycott). I support those in the multimedia industry with reasonable fair usage, such as Magnatune and other indy lables. Don't mean to be preachy here, but things are getting out of hand. If a store owner spit in your face as you were buying his wares, would you keep coming back to his store? That's basically what these media goons are doing with DRM.
Although I don't agree with piracy, as artists and developers need the income to continue to work using DRM like it has been used is just unacceptable.
