Poll: yes or no to Vista's DRM?
Speaking of Vista and its DRM stuff, Mauricio sent me a link to an interesting take on it and Peter Gutmann's paper which I blogged about earlier, by Cringely.
Basically, Cringely is saying that far from being "the longest suicide note in history" as Gutmann said Vista is, the DRM is a clever move by Microsoft. The software giant stands to reap enormous amount of money in partnership with the hardware and recording industry because... everyone will have to buy new gear and content.
Intel and AMD love it. ATI and nVidia love it. Thomson and Philips and Sony and Matsushita and Samsung and LG love it. Every movie studio, TV network, and record company loves it. The only people who don't love it are consumers, and neither industry nor government really cared much about them, ever.
To some extent, Cringely is right. People seem to spend crazy money on home entertainment electronics. I remember when Doom 3 came out, requiring heaps more graphics power than most video cards had at the time. The must-have "Doom 3" card was the NVIDIA GeForce 5900, but it retailed for around NZ$1,500.
I thought there was no way many people would plonk down that kind of money on a new card just to play a computer game. Boy was I wrong. I rang one of the local distributors, who told me the first consigments of 5900s had sold out in a few days. They were kicking themselves for not bringing in more cards into the country, because there was now a shortage of 5900s with the Taiwanese manufacturers shipping everything they had to the larger markets around the world.
However, while I think it's safe to say people are happy to spend lots of money, they also expect expensive stuff to work. If the long HDMI-chain breaks somewhere for a great deal of customers well... let's just say it'll be a long and costly class action lawsuit for Microsoft and its backers.
Then there's the question of what to do with all the perfectly good but non-HDMI compliant gear. That's just about all of today's computers. Where's that going to go? Some landfill somewhere?
This is where I think Gutmann's Chinese-made US$50 premium content player makes a huge amount of sense instead of shoving complex HDMI-based DRM down customers' throats. I also think some consumer protection legislation that regulates how DRM can be used is in order - urgently.
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Other related posts:
Today’s incomprehensible Windows security warning
Today's strange Internet Explorer 8 error message
Microsoft takes the wind out of Windows 7's sails
Comment by Hamish MacEwan, on 31-DEC-2006 07:35
"The only people who don't love it are consumers, and neither industry nor government really cared much about them, ever."
I think Cringely is failing to follow the trend if he hasn't recognised (as Time Magazine has) that this is changing. Not overnight, but it will change.
Doing things for the big boys, the vendor or incumbent, is no longer the guarantee of success it once may have been, one of the benefits of commoditisation and decentralisation resulting from lower cost of entry and better ICT performance.
The worse MS et al behave, the more incentive for alternatives, like Linux et al, there is. A point Telecom may wish to consider now, or regret in the future.
PS. Having RTFA I see that Cringely's provocateur pose weakens towards the end where reality enters with:
"But the real threat to Microsoft in the mid- to long-term is Redmond's concentration on Big Media as the key source of content and that is bound to fail in time.
We are poised at the start of a revolution in user-generated content that is actually both useful and valuable. Social networking's ability to create small but measurable markets and new content creation technologies' ability to make cost-effective -- even brilliant -- programming for those new markets will mean more media moguls but smaller and none of those moguls will have a use for DRM OR for Microsoft. So enjoy it while you still can, Bill."
PPS. I had a problem posting which was resolved by removing "plus addressing." Seems considered an error, which it is not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_addressing#Plus_.28or_Minus.29_addressing
Comment by An Happy Linux User, on 3-JAN-2007 08:55
I think there are enough DRM free alternatives.
Take a look at http://www.jamendo.com you can download over 3500 Albums under an free creative commons License.
At www.soundlcik.com you can download or buy many cc music.
I think that weblabels like emusic will grow rapidly in the future.
The Big Media companies will have no chance against this weblabels who over better conditions for the artists.
But if they still use DRM in the future this will precipitate their ruin.
Comment by Jack, on 25-JUL-2008 21:14
Hi all, i used windows XP for the last 5 years and now switched to Windows Vista Home Basic. To be frank i am not satisfied with this change. Vista looks and feels great but at higher memory utilization. Considering the cost and performance i would go back to XP itself.
============================
Jack
Did you see it? One more time? You won't get faked out here!
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Comment by Grant17, on 30-DEC-2006 13:40
Juha: You should have an extra option here...
Who cares? (I use XP and don't plan on upgrading anytime soon).
My vote is one of those in the current "Who cares (Linux/Mac)" category as you might have guessed.
Cheers,
Grant.