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Real Networks to Linux - DRM or Die
Baronvaile writes "ArsTechnica is running a story about RealNetworks VP Jeff Ayars at LinuxWorld Boston discussing the future of Linux for the consumer, if it does not support DRM." From the article: "Ayers has a few supporters in this issue from the Linux camp, as Novell, Linspire, and Red Hat spokespeople reportedly said they would be happy to add DRM to their distributions, but with some caveats. Novell, for example, is "currently in discussions with vendors who control proprietary formats" with the goal of supporting these formats in SuSE Linux. One can only surmise exactly which formats that would be, but recent rumblings from Redmond make it likely that Microsoft DRM solutions such as PlaysForSure could be among them."
If they have to make the source available under the GPL, then it's child's play to unhook the DRM, yes?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
As long as I am the one in control of my own computer and what it does (or does not do) instead of a mega corporation, then DRM is fine and dandy.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
I guess it's like a visiting dignitary - if you want so-n-so to visit your country, you have to help provide him/her police protection. In The Future® if you want pop star so-n-so to appear on your computer in audio or video, you'll need DRM to protect the material from getting around without permission.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
But I hope that it doesn't support DRM! With Vista going to DRM, I may be heading to Linux full-time.
On a side note, when was the last time anyone used RealPlayer? I just haven't found a practical use for it since around '99, but it still seems to get on other users machines.
The coffee I bought at Starbucks this morning didn't come with usage restrictions, and neither will any media I consume or use.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
And if the major Linux players go ahead and support DRM? Then other Linux distributors will come along with their DRM-less versions and scoop up market sahre, and users will see the movies and listen to the music they want to anyway using pirated versions of stuff. Let's not forget, what a coder creates, another coder can hack. No amount of DRM is going to keep enterprising coders from breaking it and freeing the content. The DRM camp is, as usual, kidding themselves.
And we've had unprotected media around us for years, like FM radio or good old cable TV, and all we need in order to make unauthorized copies of those broadcasts are cassette radios or VCRs. Just because content has gone digital shouldn't mean that we all are going to turn into the dirty, rotten pirates in need of heavy restraints that DRM proponents seem to assume that we are.There will always be freely available content, if you know where to look. Let's not forget: many radio stations stream their audio already, and how hard is it to record that stream? A user will always be able to pick up the content they want given the effort, the RIAA and all its cronies be damned. It doesn't make us criminals, but consumers forced to extraordinary lenghts to get the things we want without having to be beholden big media over and over again.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Um, the parent isn't flamebait. Real does indeed develop open source software for Linux. There's even a plugin for encoding video to Ogg Theora. I've heard Windows users claim that it is the best way to play and encode Theora on Windows...
That said, having never used RealProducer or any Helix software, why would I want to use it? Like someone else said, they left a bad taste from previous nagware, and the RealMedia-RealVideo-RealAudio format and codecs remain proprietary and therefore uninteresting to me. I'd personally rather see GStreamer become stable and get some good frontends.
This may hurt your philosophy, but we were lucky and they were stupid. They don't have to let it happen again. With appropriate hardware support (and it's there in the EFI spec, so the mac crowd have it already) there's no reason at all DRM can't be effective.
I am trolling
I'm sure Real doesn't believe in or care about the casual user but my experience is that if I can't run it, I'll run something else. When I could run a Windows 3.1 RealPlayer under WinOS/2, I listened to Real stations. When that was no longer possible because they moved on to a different format and Windows players only on the PC, I moved to streaming mp3. Now, under linux, my regular RealPlayer use has never bounced back and is limited to one stream -- but I still listen to streaming mp3.
Due to various problems with the library's web site it took her a few hours to download the books. Amusingly (for me), the library DRM turned out to be Microsoft's PlayForSure which doesn't play on iPod, for sure. I was able to witness firsthand what DRM does to Jane user: At first she was confused. Then she was annoyed. Then she asked me what was going on. Then she was furious.
Moral of the story: My wife will NEVER accept DRM ever again. She'd rather pick up a good old book at the library than waste any money on **AA's broken products, be it music or video.
I think the **AA industry overestimates its own importance. DRMed entertainment is not a necessity of life. Once time and space shiftable media such as CDs and DVDs disappear, we'll likely cease to consume any **AA media altogether. We've already cancelled our cable subscription due to the poor programming and amazingly annoying ads. There are better things to do.