DRM madness makes being legal difficult
For those not in the know, DRM is where vendors will encode your files so that you can't transfer them to other devices, play them back more than X number of times etc, basically limiting the freedom on items you have purchased. It's becoming common for "legal" download agents (such as the one provided by Virgin) to add DRM onto the files you download legally from them which limit you to only transferring them onto Virgin approved devices. This is essentially the same as Amazon selling you a DVD that will only work on an Amazon supplied DVD player. Why are companies determined to ensure users will do anything BUT be legal?
Microsoft (in normal fashion) are adding to the hilarity with their massively overdue Zune device. The Zune is going to have some "interesting" features... You are able to share your music files with other Zune users (provided there are more than 1 of you) but the person who receives your files can listen to them a staggering 3 times before they're unusable. Furthermore, they won't be able to share your shared file with anyone else. So, really giving the people what they want is what Microsoft does best! What's that I hear, Microsoft Vista Media Centre Edition (or whatever it's called) allows you to keep recorded TV for 3 days? That'll be unfortunate for those of us who enjoy holidays longer than 4 days...
When will the big players in the industry get it right? When will they understand that the only way you can actually beat piracy is by giving customers a feasible option that is
1 - financially viable
2 - not fuelled by an insane DRM policy
I, like many of my peers long to find a legal way to obtain new TV shows, films, music that doesn't cost the same as the physical DVD. I fail to see the point in spending ?7.99 on a digital album where for ?2 more I could get the real CD from the shops which doesn't decide what MP3 player I should use, nor does it mean tears in the event of my hard drive dying. I assume that albums bought from I-Tunes and the like are lost if your hard drive dies? So to be legal digitally you need to accept that the item you bought will only work on selected players, cost around the same as the physical copy would commercially AND be lost in the event of a hardware failure. Call me crazy but I'm not exactly jumping for joy at that prospect.
Offering customers the ability to pay DVD prices for a movie on the same day the DVD is released is madness. Plain and simple.
Fighting piracy isn't as simple as suing music lovers or bullying ISP's to block services, it's about offering people a viable alternative. As far as I'm concerned there are two distinct groups of pirates:
1 - Those who want to be legal but have no digital way of doing so
2 - Those who pirate because they want to
There are a high number of people who would hold their hands up as pirates who long to be legal but have no way of doing so. CD's, Games and DVD's are expensive but surely (with today's bandwidth prices) that providing digital material would be a lot cheaper? The overheads certainly are lower and yet we're expected to pay similar prices. I refuse to pay slightly less money for a LOT less product. Are prospective users to be blamed for using common sense? Personally I can't wait to see what happens as far as DRM's are concerned, they seem to be escalating to levels George Orwell wouldn't have dreamed of.
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Its no worse than apple.
With games and DVDs thats the case, a film/game is released months after each other just becasue you dont happen to live in the US
Just look at Square/Enix FF12 was released in Japan late last year, in the US the end of this month and for Europe? Who knows yet probably early 2007. Why? Most of europe speaks english why not release here too? because of region encoding!!
Then on DVDs we buy are being given adverts, specially the ’dont pirate’ ones that you cant skip. We are being punished with this crap and we are the ones buying it!!