MLB Fans Who Bought DRM Videos Get Hosed 299
Billosaur writes "Major League Baseball has just strengthened the case against DRM. If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work, as the previous DRM system is no longer supported. When the video is played, apparently the MLB.com servers are contacted and a license obtained to verify the authenticity of the video; this is done by a web link. That link no longer exists, and so now the videos will no longer play, even though the MLB FAQ says that a license is only obtained once and will not need to be re-obtained. The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem."
Doesn't matter how many (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too bad it won't affect many... (Score:5, Interesting)
In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.
"We cannot wrap our minds around two people as well as around one," said Mr. Slovic.
Not the first time, not the last, but a good start (Score:5, Interesting)
This will happen again, I'm sure. Whenever some media company goes out of biz, whenever some media company decides that they can make more money by disabling everything they already sold, this will strike again. And more people will get pissed.
Unfortunately at the company that did it, not DRM itself. But given time, people will learn. People are used to "buying" content. They're used to buying a DVD and being able to play it 'til the earth stops turning. Changing this model will not go without resistance. It will take a while for the masses to notice that seemingly minor difference, but they will.
Unfortunately that takes time. Whether it takes too long we'll see. It will sooner or later fall back on them, though. People will stop buying content, fearing that it will some day stop to "work".
So what I started to do was to do some spinning myself. Whenever some friend of mine tries to buy something DRMified, I remind him of the time when whatever DRM crippled content backfired on him. Yes, it's another company, but it also got DRM, it just MIGHT do the same, ya know... Yes, it's a lie. Still, for some odd reason my conscience gives me an A-OK for it.
Easy for society to fix this (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't give copyright protection to publications that use copy protection. DRM -> PD. Let publishers (and their markets) decide which mutually-exclusive way to go.
Re:One more reason... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A Slow Death (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in an area where power outages for a few days happen at least once a winter. When the power goes out, often times the cable does too. We have a generator, and use the Comcast DVR quite heavily. Imagine my surprise when during one recent power outage we thought we'd watch some DVRed programs only to find out that THE DVR DIDN'T WORK. I couldn't bring up the menu system w/o an active connection to Comcast central.
Go figure.
Copyright exemptions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or am I totally misremembering?
Re:hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
An injunction against MLB against doing anything like this again would also be nice, with a nice big automatic penalty in the billions of dollars, with no cuts going to lawyers fees (that's strictly MLB out-of-pocket). But that probably won't happen.
How exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
Claiming that an EULA is not a legal document sounds somewhat hypocritical.
Re:I can't wait for this to go to court (Score:3, Interesting)
It will happen when the plaintiff is shown the credit card bill where the defendant explicitly sold the right for reproduction (Playback at a later time) to the plaintiff. The right was revoked without due cause or compensation. The judge can rightly view this as theft of privilages purchased by the plaintiff.
Make no mistake, it will happen and not just in your dreams.
Agreed, mostly... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Translation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Translation? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's one thing that confuses me completely. They don't have _any_ of my money. However, I watched the world series live this year completely legally, without adverts. How did I do this? I live in the UK, and channel 5 aired them all in full. When the US broadcast goes to adverts, in the UK we get local commentary on the game.
Channel 5 is a free to view channel that relies on advertising for it's revenue. It is not affiliated with the BBC or has anything to do with the license fee. I doubt they could get a huge amount of money with advertising at the time most US sports show anyway (all the world series games started at about 1am here). However, _somebody_ is paying for channel 5 to air MLB, and it isn't me.
My best guess on who is paying for MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL (yes, we get the others too) to be aired on five is the MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL. I can't imagine channel 5 are paying much, if anything, since they do not air adverts during the games.
This is mostly a rant on how where you live affects what you can watch, and how in some cases the MLB does not care who watches their games for free. Restrictions will only apply to the populace who wants it most - if the populace doesn't want it, there is no need for restrictions. We have the same thing in the UK - it costs an arm and a leg to watch any football on TV (excluding events in law that must be on standard tv, that is the FA cup, the world cup, and England's competitive home games iirc). Anyone who wants to follow their own club on TV has to pay through the nose... though I'm not often affected by this because I support Colchester United :P. (though Colchester are now riding high and are on TV now and again)
Just to clarify - channel 5 generally only show four US sports events a week - on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they have crap phone in game shows on (which presumably net them more profit). They have shown the MLB world series in full for at least a few years, they show the Stanley cup in full. The Superbowl goes to ITV (channel 3, also commercial) who generally do a god awful job of covering it with random rugby celebrities. The NBA I'm not as interested in, but I think it goes somewhere else in finals too.
Wow... this must be nearly my longest /. post, and I've not really made a pertinent point. Oh, DRM is crap. There you go.
Re:Translation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, since we deal in big ticket items, we just hand people over to a collections agency when they play this game with us.
Re:I work for MLB.com... (Score:4, Interesting)