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Story: Microsoft's Ballmer: Digital device for the living room at 'tipping point'
Posted by: Steve (Monday 4 October 2004, 11:25 AM)
Apple soft on principles behind DRM... This is a good thing for consumers, no?
As opposed to Microsoft, who as history has proven, hates its customers with a passion. Remember Windows 95? Try using that again and tell me that the company who made it doesn't hate you.
Seriously though, there are right and wrong ways to approach DRM. There is the Microsoft way, which undoubtedly will lock you in to all things Microsoft. Imagine, you could keep all your movies and music on a Microsoft computer, stream them to a Microsoft set top box or Microsoft Hi-Fi, take them around on a Microsoft media centre. Of course, the licensing requirements would mean that you would have to hang a really large picture of Bill Gates (you get a choice of frames) in your living room and pay obeisance to it every day. You would be monitored by a small video camera built into your Microsoft set-top box to ensure that you do this, and will be issued each day with an MSLACK (Microsoft Life Authorisation Coded Key). This can be entered digitally via the internet, but won't work because the Microsoft servers are down, so instead you will have to wait for 45 minutes in a telephone queue.
I've gone off at a bit of a tangent here. I doubt Apple's solution will be much better to be honest. What we need is an entirely open alternative. I want to store my music and movies on a Linux server because it's cheap, fast and reliable. I don't want to store them on a Microsoft computer, because it would be a virus-ridden dog. Similarly, Sony make genuinely high-quality set-top boxes albeit at a price, so I'd like the data to stream to one of those. On the other hand, Apples iPod is a lovely bit of kit and on the move, I'd like to listen to my music on that. Not overly bothered about watching movies on a 5 cm screen, so let's leave that out, although maybe I'd like to use Microsoft's portable media thingy, if it turns out to be any good. Or perhaps I'll watch them on my phone running Symbian.
What I'm trying to say is:
COME ON PEOPLE. IT'S NOT DIFFICULT.
I personally will only buy into an open solution. If movie companies release their products into closed environments, I won't buy them. By all means use DRM, but not if it's DRM I can't use.
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