snakeoil

snakeoil

Well, what they call "copy-protection" is actually just meant to protect their money but not the rights of consumers.
We have a saying here that states "Der Kunde ist König" ("The consumer is the king"), and it's actually the most important rule for every salesman here. As long as the consumer get satisfied and is happy with you, he'll come around buying your products the next time as well.
Those "protections" are doing it the other way round though. They're telling the consumer "Yes, you bought this music/video, but you are not allowed to use it the way you want, not even for yourself only, you only are allowed to use it the way WE want". And recent laws are even supporting that style of doing things. I don't wonder if people stop buying CDs or DVDs because they're feeling pissed off. The markets should be orientated at the things the consumer needs and wants, and not at the needs and wants of the industry.

Hell, if I'm buying music of my favourite group, I want to play it the way I want. And I simply want to play it from a Ogg Vorbis file with XMMS. It's OK if I'm not allowed to share that file or resell it. But it's not OK if I can't even create this file and play it for myself. I don't want to change CDs for every other song I want to listen to. I just want to run them from my favourite playlist, in my favourite player. As long as they don't allow me to do that, I won't buy any music of them and I'll try to get it somehow without the need to buy something I can't really use the way I want.
If they're able to provide the music to me in a way I can use, I'm very willing to buy it though.

The real problem of the music and video industry is that they're taking away the consumer's freedom. If they were acting as our friends, we'd also act like friends and buy more CDS and DVDs. I'm quite sure of that.