This is just wonderful. I’m tired of all this DRM hubba-hubba by now. Today Bob Zitter, an exec. from HBO, came out to the public with this brilliant idea: DRM is getting so much bad press because of the name. “Digital Rights Management” is just too negative. Instead we should change the name to DCE: “Digital Consumer Enablement” That way everybody will accept it and piracy will stop forever! Yay!
Actually, no, I don’t think so. From the comments on slashdot:
I’m not going to call it piracy anymore. I prefer Consumer Choice Enablement. CCE allows consumers (not customers, since you won’t be paying for the service) to enjoy content not only in ways they haven’t before, such as on portable video players like the iAudio A2, but at a more reasonable price than they have been offered in the past. This is also a win-win situation for the content creators as it alleviates all packaging and most distribution costs, as well as providing excellent word-of-mouth advertising for FREE!
DRM doesn’t make sense anymore. Corporations have lost touch with both artists and the consumers. Artists don’t what their work associated with such an encumbering experiences, and consumers definitely don’t want to deal with it. They must not understand that half the world is fed up with it, because I can’t see why else they would keep coming up with these ridiculous schemes.
Actually, I’m afraid that part of this battle is consumer awareness. I don’t think that the average iTunes user is aware that the Green Day song they just bought is coming in a locked up little box that they can’t do anything with other than load it onto their little iPod or burn it to a CD. What if they wanted to use it in a powerpoint slideshow for a class. That would be some kind of oh-so-illegal, and now with this wonderful FairPlay technology that they probably never saw coming, they can’t do anything of the sort. That 99 cents was for their ears only. However could they have known?
As for me, I would go back to using iTunes, maybe even buy an iPod, in an instant if the whole iTunes store went DRM free (which it may, and by extension, I may, very soon). I’m not even going to consider anything in HD-DVD or BluRay until the waters have calmed dramatically.
by Sarah
11 May 2007 at 14:24
Anyone who would change their perception of DRM based on a name change probably isn’t technologically aware enough to be annoyed by DRM in the first place. (“Digital Consumer Enablement” sounds very Orwellian, does it not?) Good to see you at Fuji’s today.
by Zachary Lewis
17 May 2007 at 09:36
I heard there was AJAX over here.
by Zachary Lewis
05 Jun 2007 at 13:20
Are you going to stick with Wordpress? There’s a new version of MovableType coming out, and it looks pretty slick. Of course, you could always switch to Somery.
by Sarah
07 Jun 2007 at 13:35
Hmm, I didn’t know Wordpress allowed friends-lock. I might do that at some point, but at the moment, I think LiveJournal will really do everything I want for a blog.