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Google Video Store Shutting Down
babbling writes "Google is going to close the Google Video Store, leaving users who bought videos that used Digital Restrictions Management without their purchases. The users of Google Video Store will be compensated with Google Checkout credit, but it seems they will be out of luck if they don't happen to be Google Checkout users."
Yet another example of where DRM harms the consumer. This has happened now with Microsoft and their music service among other examples and now Google with their video service. Once companies (and governments) stop thinking of all their customers and citizens as criminals, we might start getting somewhere. This is not about business protection, it is about providing services that protect and enrich peoples lives that are being selected voluntarily. You (companies and governments) do not have a *right* to me as a customer or a citizen, but you exist at the customers or citizens pleasure. Once we manage to get that concept across, garbage like DRM will go away.
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All paid programming had to be watched through a viewer on Google's site.
To compensate customers who will no longer be able to see the videos that they purchased, Google is providing refunds in the form of credits that can be used on its online payment service, Checkout. You can only watch it through a viewer on Google's site. Google is no longer offering the service, thus your videos are not watchable.
How is that not DRM? And does that clarify the matter?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm just saying that what /. people usually yell about is companies that try to sell you something as "goods" (I bought a song) when it really is only a "service" (I bought the right to listen to a song).
It was a rental service. When you rent a movie, you clearly have no right to make a copy or whatever, and neither do you have any right to keep the tape if the store chooses to close. Not a DRM issue in my book.
What Google sold was clearly a service. If from what Google sold people thought they would be able to watch it "indefinitely" then they deserve what happened. It was a stupid move in the first place.
The content wasn't sold and locked out. What was sold was clearly an access right. You were never supposed to have any possibility of accessing it otherwise (which is what most people think they can do with DRM'd files, up to the point where it explodes in their face).
I agree, the business model was shitty from a customer point of view. And I agree that you could tie that into the whole DRM stuff somehow as far as educating the customer and so on. I was just pointing out that it's different from companies selling you files and THEN trying to lock the content out of your reach and sue you when you use it as intended.
It would not bother me if Google was to reimburse its customers in a proper way, because people in that case got what they actually bought, which is not a DRM'd file.
On this board it is enough to say DRM to see people going up in arms, without even bothering to read TFA to see what really happened.
That's not a nick, that's my NAME.