Quote:
Originally Posted by Happ
In a way, yes. And that is the good news.
The bad news is that it proved also that people did not care that much about DRM, as long as they can download it and use it easily.
Another piece of bad news is that people do not mind about the strange obligation to buy only from one almost monopolist store. Hence, Sony; hence, Kindle. Hence, crap.
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These items are only "bad news" if you are categorically against DRM, or a particular store, in principle. Both examples ably demonstrate that DRM (just another form of product security) is workable, and that a store who gets its selling model right is accepted by the consumers, however monopolistic.
I'm pretty much on record around here as not being against DRM
in principle... but against DRM
in current practice. Valuable products need some level of security, or they get stolen, plain and simple. To solve that dilemma, you can only do 3 things: Add
effective and acceptable security; remove the value; or make someone else pay for the product.
Advertising models can satisfy the third solution, as long as you can get consumers to accept the ads, supposedly by making them aware that the ads are what allow them to get free content. Low prices serve to satisfy #2, if you are okay with a smaller return on the product.
As has been pointed out, there are forms of DRM that are considered effective by vendors and acceptable to many consumers. But if this is not considered acceptable to others, choosing the 2nd or 3rd solution (or both) would seem to make more sense. In time, I believe a "practically bulletproof" DRM system would be possible and effective (think biometrics), but we're a long ways from that.
The important thing to understand is that all of these solutions are compromises, and we have to accept at least some compromise, either one of the above or something else you devise, to make the system workable. But the public has accepted these compromises in other areas, so there's no reason to expect they can't accept them here as well.