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DRM woes giving me a bad headache....
Bad news for consumers who've bought their digital music through a site that supported Microsoft's Playforsure DRM (MSN Music) as the software company is stopping support of the format. It will do so on August 31st 2008. This means that license-keys can not be transferred any more after that date.
Nokia is launching their own music store called the 'Nokia Music Store'. It seems to be in beta still but it offers around 2.4 million tracks. I've taken a look at the Dutch site.
Great was my initial reaction, especially when a track will only set you back 1 euro and a whole album will cost only 10 euros. It's like iTunes!
It's also possible to stream music from the entire library without buying it for a 10 euro monthly fee. The music can be played on modern Nokia phones like the N95 and N81 and it can also be downloaded to your pc. The latter is mighty interesting you'd think. BUT the whole thing works with Microsoft DRM which allows you to have a maximum of 3 licensed devices per track. That could be all right, but the thing is that it is not possible to make a backup of the license. So sooner or later you are bound to run into trouble when you've ran out of licenses. That can easily happen when you restore a bad Vista/Winsdows installation or you need to replace your phone. There is no way that you'll be able to access your tracks then!
Perhaps buying those CD's and ripping them to DRM-free compressed audio files all by yourself is not so bad after all. Or one could also opt to download the music.
HD-TV is not an easy thing to get in the Netherlands. The cable companies are all protecting the content is such a way that you're only able to use their own crappy devices with adapted encryption schemes and cannot even use the built-in HD tuners a lot of modern TV-sets come with. A lot of the cable providers are using low quality set top boxes and you cannot even record tv any more with most of these awkward devices. Funny how a sharper picture quality is accompanied by a poorer user experience on the whole - at least here in the Netherlands.
What happened to the VCR? I want it back, I long to the era where you could simply record your favorite tv-show and watch it. TiVo is great in the States but here in the Netherlands it's like we are 20 years behind.... er they still had videos back then so perhaps even further behind :-P
Comments
Yes, I've always thought DRM schemes were wicked and not the way to go. It always and forever seems to be good only for annoying good people rather than thwarting the ones who want to get it for free. It also seems wrong because it uses our own technology against us rather than for us. If anything, the technology should make it easier for us to make backups, not harder!
I'm pretty sure the future of the music and video industries is the all-you-can-view buffet model for a fee. I know I've been very happy with Pandora, which streams music according to your own interests. It's much more convenient than just having a ton of MP3s or what-not sitting on my hard drive.
What I'd like to do is think of a way that I can get what I want and still let the industry profit from it. What I want is the ability to listen to any song, watch any show or movie, and play any game for free at any time. I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee for this kind of access, but it can't be more than, say, $100 per month, and I don't want to be bothered with commercials that I can't skip or some crap like that.
Pandora used to be accessible from the Netherlands and I was a happy user for a long time until one evil day DRM issues made it unavailable to people outside the US... Opening the pandora website in your browsers gets you this:
Zoomed in it states:
What I don't get is that even the 'pay for a fee, buffet style' schemes or even free distribution world wide is hampered by copyright issues, despite potential customers willing to pay. I think a lot of American companies could benefit greatly from the vast - yet untapped - European entertainment market here. Hard to believe with all this crazy economic ups and downs going on.
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl
Well, I'm sure there are enterprising business persons who are just as regretful of this as anyone. From what I hear, international copyright issues are absolutely byzantine. Some countries don't recognize the others' copyrights and so on, and the intricacies are mind boggling. What they really need to do is scrap the old stuff and write more sensible policies that everyone can agree on, but we know how likely that will be. It'll likely take some big industry consortium to blow through the lawyers and get something done. Again, though, think of how many lawyers earn their living by making sure no ordinary person can possibly understand how the law works.
The thing that makes this 'new international copyright' virtually impossible is the length of the legacy copyright agreements that are currently in existence.
I have a motto 'ZEM' = zo eenvoudig mogelijk which translates to 'ASAP' = as simple as possible (instead of as soon as possible, which actually would be handy when it comes to this theme). With digital distribution schemes the music/movie/text/game makers could easily cash in the money themselves with webstores etc, without having to go through expensive publishers etc. There's quite a few music-bands that are actually doing this right now and I salute them!
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl