UK Music Retailers Beg, Drop the DRM 219
thefickler notes that consumers aren't the only ones carrying "Death to DRM" placards. UK music retailers are telling the recording industry enough is enough — that the industry's obsession with copy protection is hurting, not helping, profit. Kim Bayley, director-general of the UK Entertainment Retailers Association, said that the anti-piracy technologies are not protecting industry revenue but instead "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest." The ERA hopes the industry will drop DRM in time for the holiday season. Good luck with that.
Good luck indeed (Score:3, Informative)
Parent article (Score:3, Informative)
here's a working link to the actual article (not blog) from the nominally subscription-only financial times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ed6dd08-970a-11dc-b2da-0000779fd2ac.html
- js.
OK, put your DRM on the disk (Score:2, Informative)
Also, see http://www.riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com]
Carey
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:3, Informative)
For the benefit of readers who are not old enough to remember the Cold War the Trabant [wikipedia.org] aka "die Traubi" was a low quality automobile with a fiber glass body and a two cylinder two stroke engine produced by the former East Germany (GDR) [wikipedia.org] before the Berlin Wall [wikipedia.org] came down. It had a reputation for being noisy, dirty, and low performance, the car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and the top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph). They were popular with students for a time after the wall came down because they were legal to drive and they were cheap (owning an automobile in Germany is generally quite expensive) but they are mostly gone from the roads now due to attrition and changing tastes.
Re:Not in the UK (Score:3, Informative)
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs.
It depends what you count under the "DRM" umbrella. Does unskippable content at the start of a DVD count? Because I know plenty of people who now outright avoid buying any DVDs from brands who have taken this too far. Seriously, why do I need to sit through 30 seconds of US-based copyright warning that doesn't even apply to me here, and a load of disclaimers about interview content when there are no interviews on the DVD?
I even know people who have taken DVDs back to the shop in extreme cases and demanded a refund on the basis that the weren't fit for purpose. The shops usually point at some policy that says they don't refund opened DVDs etc. Without exception when my friends have started talking about the Sale of Goods Act and asked to speak to the manager, a refund has quickly been forthcoming, though, which gives you some idea of how much the managers think their disclaimers are worth.
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not in the UK (Score:3, Informative)
I've bought a few discs that I've had trouble playing. A couple of them I just took straight back to the shop for a refund, but the others I was able to get working after some irritating fiddling around. Playback from the discs either failed or had impossibly juddering sound. My copy program (K9copy) wouldn't rip either disc properly from one DVD drive but succeeded with my older drive so I was able to watch my DVD's directly from an iso file. All of the DVDs were from Optimum Releasing, so they lost out on a couple of sales when I took them back unplayed. The two I kept were Princess Mononoke and Pan's Labyrinth. I don't know what protection is on these DVD's but it's very irritating and I've learned to check whether a DVD is from Optimum Releasing before I buy it.
And I'm holding off buying music until I get a decent DRM free download store. There's 7digital [7digital.com] but their selection is pretty poor for the MP3 stuff. Whoever is first to offer quality MP3's from mainstream artists is going to get a lot of money from me.