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DRM = Customer lock-in
August 18, 2005 | 5:51 am
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By Casey Bisson
The recent talk about DRM in Windows Vista has finally got people thinking about the matter in competitive terms. While Digital Rights Management does little to prevent real piracy, it largely eliminates the legal me2me fair use that we’ve taken for granted. Publishers and manufacturers are pushing DRM instead as a mechanism to ‘lock-in’ customers. Don Marti, one of a growing number of people arguing this, says in Copyfight:
Isn’t it time to drop the polite fiction that MSFT and other incumbent IT and CE [CE = consumer electronics--Casey] vendors are only doing DRM because of big, bad Hollywood? …[Having] “Hollywood” clamoring for harsh DRM (based on technical facts from the IT industry) actually helps the current market leaders…
With DRM, MSFT and Apple can keep their customers from switching back and forth (or maybe to Linux), and CE vendors can’t lock out $39 Chinese DVD players, but can at least collect a tax on them.
Derek Slater, in EFF‘s Deep Links notes:
With its entertainment industry accomplices, Microsoft is turning your general-purpose computer into a toaster–a content-vending appliance that obeys copyright holders, not you.
Though, perhaps, he should have described it as a toaster that only toasts Pepperidge Farm bread. You’ll pay full price for both the toaster and the bread, but they’ll sick the FBI on you if you figure out a way to toast a Thomas’ brand english muffin in the thing.
Incompatibilities between DRM schemes are working against the technological advances that make the free flow of electronic content possible. Though it should be easier to offer an audiobook to library patrons as a electronic download than on a dozen CDs, it’s actually more complex, as Jenny Levine writes in TheShiftedLibrarian about the problems at her library system. The problem, of course, is that while it’s easy to find portable players that can play MP3s, it’s impossible to find a single DRM-encoded format that can play on all players. Each vendor calls the other proprietary, and all the while, customers suffer.
Moderator’s note: Casey is a web application developer at Plymouth State University‘s Lamson Library and writes regularly on library and technology matters at his blog, MaisonBisson.com. Meanwhile, for another perspective, see Making the Case for Embedded Digitial Rights Management in Linux Devices. – David Rothman
Technorati Tags: windows vista, consumer electronics vendors, consumer format, digital rights management, drm, format war, format wars, lock-in, technology
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Comments:
One reason there is such a proliferation of DRM techniques is that is is extremely difficult (more often than not outright impossible) to make money off another vendor’s flavour of DRM. Why won’t Microsoft ever consider supporting Apple’s FairPlay AAC format files? Because Apple would collect a royalty on each device that implements it – not Microsoft. Ditto for Apple not supporting DRMed WMA files.
Microsoft pushs DRMed WMA so strongly because they stand to make a tiday profit from all the devices that support this format. Microsoft (and other DRM suppliers) oppose completely free DRM options because there just isn’t any money in it.
It’s not always about “protecting” content or satisfying Hollywood, it’s quite often as simple as making a buck by locking in the consumer to your brand.