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Just Say No to DRM
Mar. 8th, 2010 04:47 pmYou are shopping for a new car. The latest model from [manufacturer] has a curious "security" feature wherein the car must contact headquarters by radio before it can be started. You decide to buy it, because the other features are enticing. Six months later, you are unable to start the car due to [radio interference / headquarters being bombed / manufacturer going out of business / other] and this problem lasts a few hours, a few days, or forever. Later, you are shopping for a new car again, and you see the same feature on some of the newer options again... and you buy one of them. Why? Did you not learn your lesson? Maybe the story above happened to a friend and not yourself? Maybe the other features of the car make it worth the risk?
I put this story forward as an understandable analogy (thanks Jim!) to explain what I see as really dumb moves on the part of consumers when it comes time to buy digital media or software. This isn't purely hypothetical or a thought experiment. Over and over again we see companies turning off their DRM servers on purpose, or having them fail on accident. These aren't little companies you've never heard of, or companies you would otherwise distrust, they are companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Virgin, Major League Baseball, and now Ubisoft. Millions of honest customers have been screwed by DRM of all sorts, more every time this happens. How big of a problem does this have to become before consumers will demand better?
I don't like other people telling me when I have to stop using the things that I have bought and paid for (aside from illegal uses, that's another topic). This is why I won't be buying any new games from Ubisoft. Also why I won't buy games on Steam. It is why I won't buy a BluRay player (key revocation, anyone?), any game whose multiplayer component relies on nontrivial publisher-provided server hardware (sucks to be a Halo 2 fan right about now), or, on a note more related to the original analogy, any car that OnStar can kill remotely.
Please help me understand why you don't reach the same conclusions.
I put this story forward as an understandable analogy (thanks Jim!) to explain what I see as really dumb moves on the part of consumers when it comes time to buy digital media or software. This isn't purely hypothetical or a thought experiment. Over and over again we see companies turning off their DRM servers on purpose, or having them fail on accident. These aren't little companies you've never heard of, or companies you would otherwise distrust, they are companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Virgin, Major League Baseball, and now Ubisoft. Millions of honest customers have been screwed by DRM of all sorts, more every time this happens. How big of a problem does this have to become before consumers will demand better?
I don't like other people telling me when I have to stop using the things that I have bought and paid for (aside from illegal uses, that's another topic). This is why I won't be buying any new games from Ubisoft. Also why I won't buy games on Steam. It is why I won't buy a BluRay player (key revocation, anyone?), any game whose multiplayer component relies on nontrivial publisher-provided server hardware (sucks to be a Halo 2 fan right about now), or, on a note more related to the original analogy, any car that OnStar can kill remotely.
Please help me understand why you don't reach the same conclusions.
