A Brief History of Failed Digital Rights Management Schemes 149
antdude points out this article at opensource.com on the "graveyard" of digital rights management schemes — the death of each of which has left customers out in the cold. An excerpt: "There are more than a few reasons digital rights management (DRM) has been largely unsuccessful. But the easiest way to explain to a consumer why DRM doesn't work is to put it in terms he understands: 'What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?' It was one thing when it was a theoretical question. Now it's a historical one ..."
Re:What happens? (Score:4, Interesting)
supposedly inteligent people don't want to know (Score:5, Interesting)
Several years ago when I first learned of HDLC, I posted here into a thread about the "new" high-definition technology warning that there was a new connector coming (it became HDMI) and a new nasty form of DRM going along with it (HDLC) and that people should hold off because the early adopters were going to get screwed. The response was a lot of angry posts telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about, early adopters told me that their expensive TV sets could play HD just fine, and I was modded down, apparently so people considering buying an early set without HDMI and HDLC would not see my warning.
Now people who bought those amazingly expensive early "monitors" can't watch HD content from a Blu-Ray player or on-line streaming service on them (although they can enjoy grainy 480 line service). Why? Apparently we can get angry enough when a bank tries to charge $60 a year to spend our own money via a debit card, but we are not able to get angry enough with the content providers when they screw us and make it clear their intent is to buy congressmen to subvert the intention of Copyright as stated in the U.S. Constitution. So the content providers are going to keep screwing their customers. I'm sure that they would like to screw more people, but so far they have only figured ut how to screw the artists and the customers, aside for some random lawsuits that assume if you are not signing up for the screwing then you mist be a criminal.
Re:What happens? (Score:3, Interesting)
DVDs have DRM (ineffective as it is) called CSS AND they have region coding.
Region coding is just as bad as DRM. I do not accept artificial limitations on commerce created purely to create artificial scarcity and increase profits.
If its available anywhere I have the right to obtain it at its lowest price. They can try to stop me if they can.
Re:What happens? (Score:4, Interesting)
The fix is to have strong consumer protection, like plenty of EU directives provide. Any EULA terms that violate them are invalid, so you as the user don't need to worry about them.