Well, Apple’s iTunes store has been the first resounding success of DRM. (DRM is copy protection,
keeping you from freely copying your media from any computer to any other device.
Some call it Digital Ripoff Management.)
Now the floodgates are open for DRM because it’s “proven” that consumers generally just don’t care
and will sacrifice fair use for more selection and better features.
I suppose we all have our part in this in some way. Many of us have probably bought
copy-protected software without complaint.
Now watch for DRM
being incorporated in nasty ways at the hardware level. It looks like
the next victim of DRM will be HDTV. If you buy an HDTV right now, it probably doesn’t
support HDCP, which is the upcoming copy protection that will be used
for HDTV DVDs. If you don’t have an HDCP chip in both the HD DVD player and the HDTV,
it won’t play at full resolution.
Here’s
an article about the problems this causes for HDTVs.
Here’s
an article about the problems it causes for videocards. But when Joe Public sees a movie
playing at 1920×1080, he’ll just hand over his credit card and give in…just
like Johnny Teenager buying his favorite DRMed song on iTunes.
We went to a store yesterday where all the unsellable stuff from normal stores goes.
In the toy aisle were many demo toys with rundown batteries. Sean was checking out
the toys. When he’d prod the likely buttons on a toy and it would make no sound
or have no lights, he’d move on to the next toy. Looks like old-fashioned toys
have had it for the most part, eh what?
We may have finally found an
FM transmitter that will last longer than a few months. The cable is not permanently connected
to the device, so perhaps the cable won’t go out as previous ones have. The sound is like
a distant FM station, but I’d rather have my mp3 player playing poorly than a clear CD or radio.
You can stick a USB thumb drive directly into this transmitter, which I haven’t tried yet.
Netflix is getting a lot of high-visibility press for the way they punish people who return
DVDs quickly. The most
recent story
has made its way up the chain to the cnn website. Gotta love it. I bet Manuel Villanueva never
thought he’d have his picture all over the place just for being a random Netflix customer.
Well, hopefully, Netflix will never use the word “unlimited” again.