The Perils of DRM — When Content Providers Die 275
An anonymous reader writes "If you purchase music or movies online, what happens if the vendor goes out of business? Will you have trouble accessing your content? The question came up recently after HDGiants — provider of high-quality audio and video downloads — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A consumer says his content became locked inside his PC. Walmart customers suffered a similar fate last year when the retailer shut down its DRM servers (a decision they reversed after many complaints). And if Vudu dies? Your content may be locked in a proprietary box forever. Time to start buying discs again?"
Re:Start buying disk again? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Start buying disk again? (Score:5, Informative)
Are you too young to remember... or maybe too old to remember? ;-)
Back "before the internet" we had these things called floppy disks which were quite capable of delivering a copied group of bytes to a buddy in another state by a process now known as "snailmail". The latency was pretty bad and you had to pay "per packet" but the connection was extremely reliable. And, if you were of a mind, you could pack up hundreds of floppies into a single "packet" and send them all in one go.
I never had to break anyone's copy protection either.
Re:This is one of the most important drawbacks of (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Analog hole (Score:3, Informative)
The proposal would be to make watermark detection a mandatory feature of all ADCs. See here. [eff.org]
Best option: gog.com (Score:5, Informative)
gog.com is an example of how things should be done: you download the game installer and it's yours to keep. There's not DRM, no copy protection, you can have all the game installers on your hard drive or you can back them up on DVD, Blu-ray, another drive, a flash drive, whatever. if gog.com goes under, you can still install your games.
This is even better than having a (copy-protected) media, even if such copy-protection has been cracked. I always found it a hassle to even think about how to back up those CDs and DVDs. With gog.com, I have the installer files and can do with them whatever the hell I please.
Re:Start buying disk again? (Score:2, Informative)
No, they don't know more often than not. Ignorant, perhaps, would be the better term.
Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Informative)
Look if their business model makes them enough money to stay afloat more power to them.
Is that really what you want to say? If something makes money, more power to them? There are all sorts of business models that we make illegal, and for good reason: slave trading, hitman for hire, loan sharking, etc.
Part of the problem is that all of these business models from record companies and movie studios are built on laws that we've put in place just to prop them up. And you know what? Fine. That's what society is about. We prop people up who are doing things we like. But let's not pretend that they're entitled to profit, and we're required to prop them up.
Well, anyway, the GP post wasn't talking about businesses that are making money. SilverHatHacker was specifically talking about the businesses that have gone under. The topic at hand is "The Perils of DRM -- When Content Providers Die" after all.