The opinions of the music / film industry and the paying customers on DRM (Digital Rights Management), or copy protection, are diametrically opposed to each other. Microsoft has been an active developer of DRM technology and wants to incorporate it into its next generation operating system. So it was interesting to see that Cory Doctorow of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) held a talk this week at Microsoft on why DRM is bad for everyone. Its quite a long transcript, but very readable.
Mind you, the recording industry wouldn’t put people’s backs up so much if they implemented DRM in an intelligent manner – here’s an example of what I mean:
A couple of months ago, a somewhat stressed and distracted relative sent me 2 DVDs of “The Office” (a BBC TV series). Unfortunately, she ordered them from amazon.com, and not amazon.co.uk. When I got the DVDs, I couldn’t play them because they were DRM-protected and only usable on a DVD player built for the American market. It didn’t take long to fix the problem by downloading a firmware crack to remove the region check on the DVD player, but why should a DVD sold in America stop me from seeing the recording in Europe, where the TV series has long been aired? Crazy. DRM is allegedly implemented to stop films being seen in regions where they have not yet been released, so the DVD should have been coded to allow playing in both the US and Europe.
