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DRM 'Too Complicated' Says Gates

Posted by Zonk on from the comments-good-for-three-days-or-three-plays dept.

arbirk writes "BBC News is reporting on comments made by Bill Gates concerning DRM.. It seems he has got the point (DRM is bad for consumers), but that opinion differs widely from the approach taken by Microsoft on Zune and their other music related products. The comments were originally posted on Micro Persuasion. The article also has a take on Apple's DRM." From the BBC article: "Microsoft is one of the biggest exponents of DRM, which is used to protect music and video files on lots of different online services, including Napster and the Zune store. Blogger Michael Arrington, of Techcrunch.com, said Bill Gates' short-term advice for people wanting to transfer songs from one system to another was to 'buy a CD and rip it'. Most CDs do not have any copy protection and can be copied to a PC and to an MP3 player easily and, in the United States at least, legally."

4 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. DRM is good fror Microsoft by MindStalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    A friend recently had to sit through a sales presentation of Microsoft Corporate DRM (the kind that keeps your documents and other corporate files secure based on a rule set like the music DRM). And came out of it realizing that for the Corporate DRM to work they would have to replace ALL their software with Microsoft software. Lucikly they told MS to get lost with their solutions, but the point is MS sees DRM as a way of locking customers in perpetually to them. If you create a MS DRM document you will never, outside of hacking it, be able to transfer your files away from Microsoft.

    1. Re:DRM is good fror Microsoft by MindStalker · · Score: 3, Informative

      It depends upon the rule set. If your rules say. "This MUST stay inside the cooperation and can't be emailed or turned into a regular document." Then thats exactly what it will do. But if you allow that, then you aren't really "protecting" your cooperation. The thing is that there are some industry standard DRM schemes that allow you to keep the files locked but work with several vendors. The MS scheme is not compatible with any of these.

  2. Don't be fooled... by Bones3D_mac · · Score: 3, Informative

    Saying something is "too complicated" doesn't necessarily imply it'll go away. Knowing Microsoft and the **AA groups, DRM may eventually shift to a form where it seems transparent to the end user, but is actually acting against the user's wishes in the background whenever the user attempts to defy the DRM scheme's rule set.

    For example, a DRM'ed file may appear to "copy" when the user issues the command to do so. But after the operation is completed, the user will simply get a rude awakening in the form of a message on whatever device or program their using saying that the original file was copy protected with a link to a webpage on Microsoft's website claiming that the copy didn't work because they were either trying to pirate the content or because they failed to use an approved piece of software to handle the copy operation for them.

    In short, it will probably be some method that passively harrasses the user into relinquishing control of their computer to Microsoft or some other "approved" company.

    --


    8==8 Bones 8==8
  3. Re:Not legal in the UK by RDW · · Score: 3, Informative

    'The saddest thing about this, is that it's not legal in the UK to rip CDs to MP3.'

    This at least may well change quite soon, if the government acts on the Gowers Review:

    http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/ gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_i ndex.cfm
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6214108.s tm