I almost wish this would pass, and worse
I almost wish this would pass, and worse
Posted Jan 26, 2006 5:07 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242)Parent article: Ugly legislation in the U.S.
Remember DivX, the throw-away DVD rental scheme? Flopped, and that was kindergarten stuff compared to this. People somehow could not be induced to think that it was a good deal to pay $100 more for a DVD player that had to be hooked to a phone, whose special DVDs not only self-destructed within a couple of days, but wouldn't even play on anyone else's DivX player because they would only play on the first player on which they played (that's why they required a phone connection).
I am so sick and tired of this DRM shite. I wonder what would happen if Hollywood got their wildest wishes. Speakers would play only DRM stuff, you couldn't ever own any music, just rent it, what would really happen?
I tell you what I think. I think most people don't worry about things until they are affected by them. When that day dawns and they bring home a replacement CD player and discover that (1) it won't play their existing collection, and (2) it won't work with their existing components, they will be pissed as hell. Sony may well rue the day some bright eyes decided to put rootkits on their CDs, but the firestorm from implementing true DRM would make it look like a commotion over who got the biggest potato at dinner.
I more and more believe that the only way to kill DRM for good is to implement it, call Hollywood's bluff, lock up things so bad that the public will smash the industry.
Posted Jan 26, 2006 14:35 UTC (Thu)
by rknop (guest, #66)
[Link] (1 responses)
The vast majority of people aren't even aware of CSS, because their DVD players and Windows machines handle it. Only those of us who run Linux and want to use free software to legitimately watch DVDs are (perhaps) aware of CSS, and need to do something that Hollywood considers illegal to work around it. Yet, it's a restriction, and a stupid one that's a thorn in our side.
Region coding more people are aware of, but not enough people care for it to be even a PR problem for Hollywood. I talked to my sister about this in the last couple of months; she spent a few years in Brazil, and only then became aware of region coding, *and* she was working around it before she even knew what was going on. Somebody told her how to get disks to play. I told her what was going on, and also warned her about the "only 5 changes" stupidity. It's only the people who move, or who move back and forth, across the Holly Curtain who are even affected by this. Many of them are quite inconvenienced and quite annoyed. The rest of us-- we're not affected, so we just pretend it's not a problem and keep buying our eye candy.
DRM can be slipped in there, as long as there are enough people who aren't bothered by it that Hollywood can keep getting away with it.
It's like a lot of free speech. Nearly everybody in this country has all kinds of speech that they wouldn't mind seeing forbidden. If it isn't something they wanted to say anyway, most of them won't object to it being squelched. If you're determined to censor, the clever thing to do is to figure out how to do it in a way that some will support you, and most won't notice. Very few people have thought about it enough to realize that free speech means other people being able to say things it wouldn't even occur to you to want to say, or that you don't approve of.
-Rob
Posted Jan 26, 2006 17:03 UTC (Thu)
by felixfix (subscriber, #242)
[Link]
Your sister's encounter with region encoding is what I don't want. The public's encounter with DivX is what I do want, but more so.
In contrast, though, look at the DRM we've got right now: CSS and region coding.I almost wish this would pass, and worse
I want this horrible legislation to come into effect precisely because it will be so draconian and will be noticed by everyone. Not some weak wannabe, I want the public to get hit by the full strength horror so it will be buried once and for all.No!