Monday, August 27, 2007

Missing the point, again

A discussion of digital restrictions management (DRM) on the BBC website quotes the usual sources, and gets the usual party line. That music was released on CD's, without DRM, so people expect it to be available. Video, on the other hand, hasn't been released in a non-crippled protected form and so it's perfectly okay to keep doing that, or so says the industry spokesdrone:

"There isn't a contradiction of approach between the physical and digital products... Video content and DVD has always been very protected - people do not expect to copy DVDs easily."

[sigh] No. Let's take this from the top. Again.

Users have certain rights. They're a matter of law. The fact that the MPAA threatened and bribed hardware manufacturers into selling crippled players that don't protect those rights, does not mean those rights don't apply. Just because the MPAA could do it, and dare anyone to stop them, doesn't mean they were right to do so, or that there's any presumption that they should continue to do so.

But as long as no one complains, they can go right on ignoring the law.


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