Jeremy Allison On Why DRM Will Never Work

eldavojohn writes "At the ZDNet site, Jeremy Allison (a well-known employee of the Google corporation) goes on a hilarious rant against Digital Rights Management. He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes & Star Trek while ending with: 'Believing in a DRM business model is like joining Star Fleet security, putting on your red shirt, and volunteering to beam down to the new unexplored planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Someone will be coming back from that mission, it's just not likely to be the security guard. Always a true engineer, Scotty had the good sense to stay safely on board the ship.'"

Comments

Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu

[Yaa 101]

Stupid short term ME ME ME rant as usual.

um

[everphilski]

The obvious conclusion is that if people aren't willing to pay enough to make it a viable business model, the entertainment industry should look for another business model instead of trying to create artificial monopolies with the help of broken technology to make the failed business model viable.

So if people aren't willing to pay enough to make car salesmen a viable business model, then they should re-think the model? I don't know about you, but I call those people car thieves.

Re:Correction

[inviolet]

Sure it does. Every time I get one of those questions, I tell the person that Sony (or whoever it is that sold the media) ripped you off. They gave you a rental model when you paid for the purchase model, and that is wrong.

Given the likelihood and ease of redistributing a non-DRM'd sound track, the $1-2 price could not possibly be a purchase model. Sony or whoever would have to charge you the usual $50K-500K to cover the re, re-re, re-re-re, and re-re-re-redistributions that the track is reasonably expected to experience once Joe MP3er gets ahold of it.

Or to put it another way: since you believe that modern consumers are still of the "buy it and you own it" mindset, then they should also innately understand that giving a thing away means that they no longer own it.

And another thing. Since you here on slashdot know that Sony is in fact offering a rental model, you cannot apply to yourself the excuse that you are desperately agitating for the laymen. And don't fancy yourself a caped crusader who is out to avenge Sony's wrongs by copying their music tracks. At least do yourself the service of being honest about your ends and means.