Currently, we're halfway through the first decade of the 21st Century.
People have become almost attached to their VCRs, digital camcorders, DVD-based recorders, cassette/CD-RW/MiniDisc recorders, and similar media manipulation and playback equipment. It logically follows that content distributed on media for use in these devices will be in high demand. If a law were passed that effectively cuts down the uses of any kind of content to the point where customers both get less content (due to **AA homogenization of the market) AND what content is available is restricted through whatever means, the customer won't think twice about it.
When any company that provides products in demand starts to limit customers’ options for methods in which they can use the product, they'll be unable to retain those customers as easily, especially in the modern consumer-driven society we are living in.
Customers don't know enough about copyright law, patent law, fair use, and many other aspects of the whole digital media revolution that they should, and that will, in the end, work against any huge media conglomerate trying to restrict content. It may seem counter-intuitive, but to illustrate the truth behind customers that are ignorant of copyright and patent law, I'll do something that's very practical and yet very innovative: I'll lay down the state of current technology (with an emphasis on equipment that contains modern content protection technologies) directly on top of my experiences growing up in North Carolina. It’s not a catch-all story, but my hope is that some people will read this slice-of-life story and see the lack of usefulness behind content protection as it stands today.
When I was 13, DVD players were a few years away and computers with even the lowest end Pentium were still in the thousands. I owned a VCR, a couple of different cassette players, and a portable CD player. I owned very few music CDs, and I couldn't make my own, but I could copy my dad's 400-disc collection to my insane stockpile of blank tapes, and I could copy rented movies to a blank tape for later (re-)viewing or record a show off the TV while I was off at school. In fact, I made custom cassettes and recorded my favorite content on VHS for viewing after it was off ALL THE TIME.
Now, let's cut my teenage media-loving gusto off via DRM and lawsuits, and see how things would change.
Magically, I'm thrust from my magnetic tape on a spool into a world of shiny coated plastic and computers that double as space heaters because the multi-gigahertz AMD CPUs aren't down to Intel's micron level yet. Instead of tapes and CDs, I have a CD burner, an mp3 player (hell no I can't afford an iPod, and mp3 players get better battery mileage, etc). And I have DRM beating my brow everywhere. What would this be like?
I get my new mp3 player and decide the first thing I want to do is put my favorite songs from my favorite CD on it. So I find out from the internet how to "rip" a CD. Then I proceed to try to rip it so I can take the music and put it on my mp3 player.
Errors abound. Oh, I look at the CD cover for a while to see if anything insightful is there, and lo and behold, "this CD uses copy protection."
I own the damn CD and I can't even put some of it on my mp3 player that I paid for?! If it was a CD being put on a tape for a Walkman, I wouldn't have that problem, but no one sells Walkmans anymore...
Okay, so half my CDs aren't "ripping." I find out where I can get copies of music that's "pre-ripped" and find out about Grokster. I download the songs I own that I can't rip due to the CD blocking it, and put them on my mp3 player. Problem solved.
I rented a DVD from the store and I want to watch it. My dad's already watching another movie in the living room, so I have to settle for my 17" CRT monitor on my computer. I pop the DVD in and...
...Errors abound. What the HELL?!
..."copy protected."
I have to wait for their movie to finish, then I hook the DVD player to the VHS deck that my dad bought while they were still being sold, and proceed to watch the movie and make a copy so I can watch it again because it has to be returned before noon tomorrow, and I think I might like to watch it twice.
Analog device saved the day this time...
I listen to my mp3 player on the ride home the next few days. When I get home one particular afternoon, I want to watch that movie again, because I was talking to my friends about it today and I had some spare time to be entertained. So I pop it in the VCR and hit "play."
...Terrible color and brightness artifacts abound. The movie sounds fine, but the image is terribly mangled. Is the VCR broken? No, because they were using it last night to watch a classic movie, and it never had a problem!
What the HELL is wrong NOW?!
The good old internet tells me that it's something called "macrovision" which is a "copy protection" technology. Shoot me in the foot.
I'm forced to watch the TV. Oh, a show is coming on about some swimsuit models. Hormones in overdrive, I fire up my DVR to record the show so I can see the feminine curviness again and again like the politically incorrect woman-loving teenage boy that I am.
"Recording of this program is not permitted." I think I read about this one. Didn't they call it a "broadcast flag?" So my parents could record any TV show they wanted on that old VHS quickly and easily, but I have this $300 box here that has more computing power than a few old mainframes and I can't even record a shallow TV show about how they take pictures of scantily clad women?!
I thought technology was supposed to make this stuff work BETTER, not WORSE!
*sigh* I spend the next few days royally pissed off about the movie, the DVR, the CD...all my expensive, shiny technology is spitting in my face at every turn, and it's all in the name of "copy protection" or something like that.
I turn my computer on, and it crashes. What? Crash, crash, crash...this blue screen won't go away. I do some research on a library computer and find out that the "copy protection" involved on the CD I was trying to rip actually installs badly written software on the computer that can break it. The family spends $120 having someone repair the problem, and I barely manage to explain what happened.
The 'rents are pissed about the situation in general, though...
A few days later, my parents get a note because they're being sued for downloading some popular songs off the Internet. My life promptly goes to hell as everything is disconnected and taken from me because my parents are being sued for something I did.
What did I do wrong? I explained the situation but the number of zeroes on the paperwork was causing my pleas to fall on deaf ears.
No mp3 player, no movies, no computer, and my parents are paying out thousands from the college savings they had for me because I got them sued and they had to settle; they're not exactly the richest family in the city, and $500,000 is too much for them to risk being forced to pay out, I'm told.
I lose out on some of the tuition I need for my college, and I'm restricted from having fun with my electronics for quite some time...
All in the name of protecting media from thieves.
This is what the media associations and their respective member labels do when they put DRM on everything, file lawsuits, try to enact broadcast flags, and so on.
Content protection mechanisms damage customers and force them into questionable activities to exercise fair use rights, but more importantly, users who don’t know what any of it is will certainly be more likely to trip over the law (and step on rights holders’ toes) while they attempt to use the content in the ways they want to.
No business can survive without satisfying its customers.
It’s time to start satisfying.
Jody Bruchon [Bruchon is the owner of a computer service company in North Carolina. He says his personal mission is to "assault political correctness, destroy ill logic, blow away multiculturalism, and stomp out flames of ignorance". When he’s not doing that, Bruchon enjoys visiting his favorite sushi bars and working on his latest computer-related projects.]
