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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."
"Do no business"
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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leaving users who bought videos that used Digital Restrictions Management without their purchases
That'll teach them to never buy non-pirated videos in the future!
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
A better analogy would be you arrived at the cooking school and the receptionist told you they no longer teach the classes you'd paid for, but they could give you credit for yoga lessons at a place across town.
If you happen to read TFA, you will notice that there is no mention of DRM.
Simply because this is not a DRM issue. This service offered to WATCH video on demand, not download it.
Once the service stops, there is no way to continue watching information you don't have (you might call that the ultimate DRM...)
In the end, it's about people who have been drawn to an service which cannot guarantee them what hey might think it does. It is not a DRM issue, it's a "customer thinking before he buys" issue. Google has every right to close its store and people should have thought about that.
Now, the fact that Google will provide refunds only through Google Checkout, now that seems pretty unfair to me.
That's not a nick, that's my NAME.
Buy DRM locked music from Microsoft? Surely there is no possible risk. They even labelled it "PlaysForSure", so I know I'll still have access to it in a few years. Oops, you old music doesn't work on the new media player, and your new music doesn't work on your old media player.
Buy DRM locked movies in the form of silver access to DIVX disks? A giant chain like Circuit City won't screw you. Unless they decided it's no longer profitable and take your access away.
Love your EV1 electric car and would happily pay to own it? Too bad, the manufacturer wants it back and would rather destroy the car than sell it to you.
Buy video to watch online through Google? Google's a good company with a long view, there is no risk there. Oops, again.
This is why a world where you don't own anything is a bad idea. The people leasing or licensing the access to you can and will take it away from you. It's alright to agree upon fixed terms up front (I'm only guaranteed my apartment for a year; I'm only guaranteed access to a given NetFlix video stream for a day or two), but when I decide I want access forever, it damn well better be forever.
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For years, us geeks on /. have been very wary of DRM. Mainly because many implementations depend on being able to regularly phone home - and if "home" ceases to exist (or, for that matter, continues to exist but decides it's not taking any more calls, as in this case), all the media you've paid good money for essentially evaporates.
But as long as that's a theoretical problem, one that's never been known to happen - it's one which won't get taken seriously by the masses who actually buy this stuff. Now, however, there's a concrete example. "Do not buy this, all your music and video can suddenly stop working for no immediately apparent reason and you won't have any comeback whatsoever".
On a side note, I wonder how long I'd last in the real world if I sold physical products which could, if I so desired, evaporate overnight with no prior warning and the purchaser having done nothing wrong? And then I started making them evaporate?
Yes, I think it is. Customer expectations are different when they buy a film; they expect it to be like a video or DVD where they get ongoing access. Personally, I think that's a legitimate expectation.
Now you can argue that expectations are going to have to change if you want. But that isn't going to help if no one buys DRM content because they've not received the value they expected for their transaction.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I hate pirating as a way to get entertainment, not for some ephemeral moral reasons, but simply because it is a pain in the ass. Bittorrent takes forever (maybe that isn't true for everybody but my ISP shapes traffic), IRC and USENET are unreliable and ususally have queues. Quality is sometimes good sometimes not, you never know. If your tastes are the least bit eclectic or outdated, you can forget about finding what you want easily. Pirating entertainment just sucks. It sucks less than going to the store to get your entertainment, but it still sucks.
I would love to pay money (even at the current going rates for CDs and DVDs minus a couple bucks since I have to make my own cases and provide my own disks) to download quality files from fast servers. And, low and behold, every time somebody starts something like this, they make it suck more than pirating movies. You get tied to a platform, the store closes out from under you, you have to run an interface that shows you ads just so that you can play your music, movie, whatever.
How hard is it to make an interface that sucketh not? Their content is already on thepiratebay, so its not like offering video and music for download is going to increase piracy. They should at least offer a viable alternative for those of us who would rather pay (and I bet there are many of us).
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
The problem is when customers and citizens fail to realize that they are ALL consumers... citizens are consumers of government services, the same way customers are consumers of company services. Since both of those groups rarely insist on being informed consumers or better yet, SELF RELIANT, they end up at the mercy of their service providers.
DRM is merely the latest in a monopoly non free market that has been prevalent since government got created and got involved in regulating the market. Until the sheep stop being livestock and assert their own right to exist and make informed decisions, until the slogan singing stops, there will be little but more of the same. Tyranny never stopped, it merely dropped the eastern iron gauntlet and grabbed the velvet glove... and it hasn't lost a match yet, and once more, we're nearing the game point of the match called "Western Civilization".
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
This is precisely why I won't buy video from iTunes.
Unless I can burn it to a standard DVD, I will never buy DRM'd video from anyone!.
I do buy music from iTunes since they openly allow you to burn it to disc, therefore making it usable even if I run out of "authorized computers" or Apple decides to deprecate their DRM.
I'm in the process of looking at eMusic too, but they won't show you their whole catalog unless you sign up (ie. give them a credit card number) for their free trial. I'm guessing their catalog is, uh, limited since they don't want you to see it before you sign up.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
This incident shows the pitfalls of DRM, but Google didn't HAVE to do this.
When Microsoft shutdown their MSN Music Store (the music store portion of http://music.msn.com/ ), they kept the DRM servers in place so users that had purchased music from there could still obtain DRM licenses for the music as needed (for example, when moving the music to a new computer). Google has *plenty* of money and ability to do the same. This is a BS move by Google.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000