MLB Fans Who Bought DRM Videos Get Hosed

Billosaur writes "Major League Baseball has just strengthened the case against DRM. If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work, as the previous DRM system is no longer supported. When the video is played, apparently the MLB.com servers are contacted and a license obtained to verify the authenticity of the video; this is done by a web link. That link no longer exists, and so now the videos will no longer play, even though the MLB FAQ says that a license is only obtained once and will not need to be re-obtained. The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem."

Comments

No support? Hear from my lawyer.

[Volante3192]

The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem

I smell a class action coming along..

Translation?

[phalse phace]

"....there are no refunds due to this problem.""

It's your problem, not ours.

Re:Translation?

[sm62704]

-1, troll? Who gave major league baseball owners slashdot mod points? The parent is correct, albeit sarcastically (and I'd have been sarcastic too). It's not a problem to the MLB, they already GOT your money, sucker!

Now mod me troll too.

-mcgrew

Re:Translation?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There may yet be a chance to settle it.

If you can dig up the credit card bills, you might still be able to do a charge-back. I know it's kind of pushing it, but my mom does the CC transactions for the family business, and she says that in some cases, there is time limit for a charge-back. It's really brutal for the merchant though, $15 fees per transaction on top of losing the money. Normally, I'd say doing a chargeback two years after the purchase is pretty dickish, this situation is ridiculous. I'd check your card's policies first, but once you know for sure, I suggest that you take it up with the customer service and threaten to do a charge-back before going through the procedure.

Re:Translation?

[Intron]

Seems reasonable. You got to use the video for two years. They got to use your money for two years. They take the video back, you take your money back. Fair is fair.

A Slow Death

[JBMcB]

I don't think DRM is going to go away until a lot more people get burned by it in this way. Most people don't understand or care, once something like this rears up and bites them in the ass, the outrage machine will start. Thank you, MLB, for being the obnoxious, monopoly-driven organization we've all come to love to hate.

Re:A Slow Death

[Dachannien]

Digital TV and the assault on the VCR/DVR is going to be the telling moment in the fight against DRM. Everybody's got a TV, and just about everyone has either set their VCR or DVR to record a show or movie for them or gotten their nine-year-old child to do it for them. When the media companies finally get their way and Joe and Jane Sixpack can no longer freely re-watch "It's a Wonderful Life" to their heart's desire every holiday season, there will be outrage. Of course, by that time, the technology will be so entrenched that it will be next to impossible to remove it.

Re:Too bad it won't affect many...

[fredrated]

How can you classify speculation as a fact?

Re:hmmm.

[iocat]

Access which you purchase with the proviso that it will always be there IS a right. It's fine to make fun of baseball, fans, and our culture, but if someone sold you a book, and told you you'd always be able to read it, and then two years later you couldn't -- well, to it bluntly, that's fucked. MLB needs to provide the access, or refund the money. It wasn't a time-limited purchase, and MLB is on the hook for this.

EULA?

[finnw]

Depends whether anyone saved a copy of the EULA they signed when they downloaded the videos.
If it favours MLB they'll find a copy. But if it doesn't, it would be quite easy for them to say "We've lost all copies of that EULA but our policy back then was to put in a 1-year time limit" and given the small numbers involved, probably no-one will be able to prove otherwise. I think I'll get in the habit of saving a copy before clicking on "I Agree" from now on.

Re:EULA?

[kat_skan]

I think I'll get in the habit of saving a copy before clicking on "I Agree" from now on.

Just out of curiosity, how are you planning to prove that the EULA you have is the one they made you agree to you?

Re:EULA?

[M. Baranczak]

I think I'll get in the habit of saving a copy before clicking on "I Agree" from now on. Just out of curiosity, how are you planning to prove that the EULA you have is the one they made you agree to you? How are they planning to prove that the EULA they have is the one you agreed to?

Phoning home is OK for E.T.

[olddotter]

I don't want any product hardware, software, or DRM media that must phone home for permission to work. Too much a risk that the company will go out of business, or decide maintaining the service is no longer profitable.

If this story is true, I think a class action lawsuit is in order...

Re:One more reason...

[phalse phace]

Correction. This is another reason why you shouldn't pay money for DRM'ed content.

Re:Yea that's a shame...

[sm62704]

Excuse me while I enjoy my MLB feed on Morpheus. Oh wait, I forgot - I stopped watching baseball the year they cancelled the world series.

My point, thoough, is that the only ones with functioning videos got them illegally.

-mcgrew

Unlocking Software

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

MLB should release unlocking software for the old DRM scheme, even if all the software does is apply the new scheme instead. DRM doesn't have to mean that the files you purchase suddenly become useless, if the company actually takes responsibility for it and fixes it. It's ethically their responsibility to rectify any damage their actions do to other people's property. But there's probably some clause saying that the people don't actually own the video, and are thus under no obligation to ensure the playability of the file. What's worse is that people aren't technically allowed to do it themselves, thanks to the DMCA. I think, however, that MLB is going to learn the meaning of the old saying: "those who aren't permitted to do, sue".

Re:No surprise there...

[Andy Dodd]

Same thing that happened to people who bought into Microsoft's "Plays for Sure" system and then bought a Zune?

Ooops... I found it hilarious that the first company to break compatibility with a system called "Plays for Sure" was the company that created the system... (Note that I said break it, companies which never implemented it in the first place don't count.)

Re:I wish I had that kind of time

[Bert64]

People who *play* any given sport will often watch old games. If your coaching someone in a sport, showing the players your coaching an old game is a very good way to show and explain examples.

Re:Yea that's a shame...

[Bert64]

In any case, those people who obtained pirate copies often have a superior experience to legit buyers. All this does is encourage more piracy.

Re:Serves them right

[Bert64]

Unfortunately, most people don't realise what DRM is or why it's bad...
They believe the marketing hype, designed to make people think it's a good thing. The people need to be educated about the dangers of DRM, and stories like this are good examples. People won't believe you without hard evidence, they're more likely to believe mass market propaganda.

this is not fascism

[cliffski]

and the idiot who tagged it as such needs to read some history. This is BAD DRM, and sucks, and the people responsible are idiots and should be sued. but to equate not being able to watch sports videos with fascism is just immature bullshit that makes you look foolish. Don't cry wolf.

Took them long enough

[Fujisawa Sensei]

If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work

The change was made sometime during 2006, and its now October 2007, and people are only noticing this!?

People keep forgetting what DRM stands for

[Alzheimers]

DRM - Digital Rights Management.

It's about THEIR rights, not yours.

Re:People keep forgetting what DRM stands for

[arkhan_jg]

Intellectual property is a fiction. It's an attempt to conflate non-physical legal protections with property to make them sound better. You have patents, copyright and trade marks. None of them are property, or have the properties of property. With physical property it is clear who has it, and who owns it, as there's only one physical thing. With patents, copyrights and trademarks, very different rules apply to different uses. Intellectual property conflates many different laws into one handy label, when they shouldn't be. It's sloppy thinking.

DRM is a technical measure over-enforcing copyright. It prevents the exercise of fair use. The DRM on the MLB videos is preventing people watching their purchased copies, and the seller has no intention of fixing it. DRM has nothing to do with protecting patents or trade marks, just copyright. Distribution rights are not property.

But since we're playing this bad analogy between physical property and copyright protection, I again point out that after I buy something from a store, and take it home, it's mine to do with as I please. It's my property. If I break criminal law with it, I get investigated and prosecuted by the police. If I break a civil law with it, I get sued by the other party. At no point after I've left the mall do the guards get involved with this.

With DRM, I buy a copy of copyrighted material infected with DRM. The DRM decides what I get to do with my property, regardless of its legality. It decides what computer I play it on. It decides where I can play it. It decides whether I'm allowed to use extracts for parody or news commentary. It's unthinking rules standing over my shoulder, saying yes or no to what I can do with my purchased property, despite all of them being legal.

DRM is poisonous to fair use and normal use, and removing it or telling others how to remove it is prohibited by law. That is wrong. If mall guards did what DRM does, I'd refuse to shop at that mall too. Bet those people who bought the MLB videos wish they hadn't bought them now.

Re:People keep forgetting what DRM stands for

[UbuntuDupe]

Oh geez, not this again...

Intellectual property is a fiction. It's an attempt to conflate non-physical legal protections with property to make them sound better. You have patents, copyright and trade marks. ... Intellectual property conflates many different laws into one handy label, when they shouldn't be. It's sloppy thinking.

IP is only a fiction in the sense that *physical* property rights are a fiction. Property rights delineate the boundaries of acceptable behavior regarding identifiable things, and so does IP. Remember: physical property rights don't automatically spring from nature; they are things we assign to people regarding physical objects. When you say "I own this item that I can touch and feel and all that crap", what you really own is a bundle of rights that use that item as a referent, and those rights are precisely as intangible as IP.

They are both called "property" in common parlance because each and every honest, intelligent person who approaches the issue sees striking similarities. Namely, behavior restrictions start applying at the moment of discovery, and then can be transferred to others. The reason trademarks, patents, copyrights, likeness rights, etc. are combined into one handy label is because that is how nomenclature works. When someone wants to refer to all members of a set without having to enumerate them, we create terms to avoid excessive verbiage for unnecessary clarity. In the exact same sense, we have no probleem using terms like "significant other" to refer to: {husband, wife, fiancee, fiance, boyfriend, girlfriend} even though there are very different implications to each of these relationships.

DRM is a technical measure over-enforcing copyright. It prevents the exercise of fair use. The DRM on the MLB videos is preventing people watching their purchased copies

I agree that the DRM here violated the purchase agreement. And I agree that they should be made whole with a full refund + damages or restored access. But it is no different from any other time someone fails to uphold their end of a contract or falsely recognizes a property right as not belonging to you. It says nothing about DRM as such; that was simply the means to act on a false positive this time.

But since we're playing this bad analogy between physical property and copyright protection, I again point out that after I buy something from a store, and take it home, it's mine to do with as I please. ... If I break a civil law with it, I get sued by the other party. At no point after I've left the mall do the guards get involved with this.

Newsflash: ALL analogies are bad when you don't see the correspondence. The fact that guards don't follow you home is irrelevant to the point I was making. The point was that the provider had a false positive and denied someone access to something to which they had a right. This happens at malls just as online. The fact that someone had a false positive and denied you access says nothing about whether the means they used are inherently unjust. That was the point.

DRM is poisonous to fair use and normal use, and removing it or telling others how to remove it is prohibited by law. That is wrong. If mall guards did what DRM does, I'd refuse to shop at that mall too.

REALLY? If mall guards ever stopped you at any time that you hadn't done anything wrong, you would never shop their again? And I supposed you'd do the same if that happened to someone else. So, to summarize, if mall security ever inconveniences someone who hadn't done anything wrong, you would never shop at that mall. Therefore, you don't go to any malls.

But why stop there? Police pull people over when they haven't done anything wrong. Hell, people are detained and stand trial, when they later turn out to be innocent. I guess to be really consistent, you have to flee those countries.

Of course, you're not. That wasn't the point. Your poin

But, isn't that the real purpose of DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

To make you pay over and over again for the same content? Do you really think that when you lose your MP3 player with the songs locked to the hardware, that you WON'T have to buy those songs all over again? Do you really think that when you buy a new PC, you'll be able to use the licensed software that ran on the old PC? Face it, if it's got DRM, you didn't buy it -- you're just renting it!

Re:hmmm.

[RattFink]

I'm willing to bet that somewhere in the user agreement, there's a provision that lets them do exactly this, and abusive hard-to-read* EULAs that no one really expects people will read, are just as much the problem.

I am no lawyer but selling someone something and delivering something entirely different is fraud. When you start marketing the videos in the same manner as you do DVDs it's not unreasonable for the customer to expect the same lifespan of the product. I just don't see however much wrangling is done in the EULA could overcome that expectation in the sale.

Re:No surprise there...

[SeaFox]

Hmmmmm...I wonder what will happen to all those iTunes songs once Apple moves to a new DRM or non-DRM format in the future and stops supporting their old format???

Well, since iTunes doesn't verify you have rights to the songs with Apple's servers every time you play them, unlike these MLB clips, nothing would happen.

If your hard drive got corrupted and you had to reinstall everything, you aren't allowed to redownload the lost files. Just like if your house burns down the record companies don't have to replace your crispy CDs.

MLB is on the hook for user stupidity?

[Anonymous Coward]

if someone sold you a book, and told you you'd always be able to read it, and then two years later you couldn't -- well, to it bluntly, that's fucked

If you want to make an analogy, at least make a complete one.

"Here's your book. It's encrypted, but cheap. To read it, just come by my house, and use the decoder ring I have out front." (2 years pass.) "Oh, I remodeled my house and lost the decoder ring. Sorry."

Now try applying common sense. If you couldn't view the content unless your computer was connected to mlb.com, and you assumed that mlb.com would stay around with the same content until the end of time, then you're a moron. Yes, they screwed you, but boy did you walk into that one.

Re:MLB is on the hook for user stupidity?

[xouumalperxe]

Expecting the population in general to understand the tech behind DRM is really not a fair expectation. How many non-technical people (or even technical but non-computer related) do you know that actually properly understand the concepts of domain, subdomain, top-level domain, web server, smtp/pop/imap servers and how they relate to each other? How many people do you know actually know that a "web server" isn't an alien machine but just a plain old computer, possibly assembled from more expensive parts and in a different type of case?

Now, how much do you think the average MLB video buyer knows about DRM and how it works? How much should he have to know? How much did MLB publicize the fact that you need them to give you a permission on a view-by-view basis?

Usually, to use a DVD without encountering DRM issues, you just need to know the region code on your player, and check the tag on the DVD against that code. The DVD's region encoding is usually quite visible near the credits on the backside of the box. Assuming you know about region codes, this is quite simple and hassle free (though you're still in for a shock if you're not aware of this, go into a different region and buy a DVD only to not be able to read it at home). When I see that the videos on MLB.com have copy protection, why can't I assume that it'll be approximately as hassle free as a DVD?

Re:One more reason...

[LWATCDR]

Not even close to the same thing.
1. With VHS you could borrow a friends VHS deck to watch the tapes. You can not with DRM content.
2. With VHS tapes you could sell them on Ebay if you didn't want to buy a new VHS deck.
3. With VHS tapes you could have gotten tuner card for you PC and dumped them to your PC as a back up and burned your own DVDs.

What the DRM content providers are giving you is the right to use the media. You don't own the media, you can not resell it when you don't want it anymore and you can not make backups of it.
Well if I am buying just the right to use the media then they are under an obligation to make sure that I can use that media.
I don't condone piracy and I don't do it myself but I sure wouldn't every buy a DRMed video from the MBL again! When you are talking about material that is broadcast then things seem a bit fuzzy.
If I record the show myself that is fine. But if I forget to record the show and download it then that is illegal? I will not even start on the "rules" that NFL put on their broadcast games. Heck just talking about a game you saw on TV seems to be violation of their rules.
The media producers would love it if.
You had to pay every time you watched a show or listened to a song.
You couldn't skip over any commercials.
Get up and go the bathroom when the commercials are on.
Then you have the people that think they should pay for nothing. I say a Pox on both their houses. The problem is that DRM provides no benift to anyone. Well except the DRM producers.

Re:No support? Hear from my lawyer.

[compro01]

They said no refunds would be given

and Comcast said no lawsuits. Guess what the courts said about that.

Re:One down!

[AK Marc]

I'll order MLB Extra Innings instead,

So you take a company being noticed for screwing their customers, and you are looking for ways to give them more money. And people wonder why corporations think they can do anything they want without repercussions.

Re:Too bad it won't affect many...

[Technician]

If that's so, I'm one of those 20. Granted, it was only two games (total cost: just under $8 USD), but it shows the system is fucked beyond reproach.

This is the beauty of the system and the Internet. As people find out what doesn't work, they quit buying it. From your comment "it shows the system is fucked beyond reproach." shows me you are not going to be a repeat consumer. Between online rent-a-song for the Plays for Sure music to retractable email, to Vista Activation, the fact is DRM is killing sales of content as more get the fact the system is broken.

DRM, Activaction, and cost are the main reasons I left Vista upgrades out of my future plans. I have moved to Open Source. As such, DRM is now an incompatible format. I can't use DRM, so I don't buy it. Amazon got it. Apple is just now waking up to the fact.

DRM protects content. DRM kills sales. Some loss due to piracy is an issue. DRM is the answer. Some loss of sales is due to DRM. When that is a bigger problem than piracy, DRM starts to go away. It happened on floppys and came back on CDs. Items with high incidence of copyright violations is the only items with DRM on CDs. Most software CD's except Games and high cost MS products and some high priced music and movies (High Def formats) are free of DRM. Most all my purchased software CDs are DRM free.

Re:I work for MLB.com...

[aug24]

You say that *you* feel bad, and that a solution will be found, but I also work for big corporations and while I, the geek, may well want to spend time on doing something that is right, The Man (in the form of the bean-counters) often overrides me because it's not profit-making to do the right thing.

Maybe a solution will be found without antipathy. Or maybe it'll take a lawsuit to make the MLB bean-counters accept that a solution will be best for the company. Either way I agree that it is going to be found, and maybe the good that comes out of this is that everyone who likes baseball will learn to think twice before buying DRMed media.

Justin.

Re:Easy for society to fix this

[Ox0065]

YES!!!

Copyright is given as a gift in exchange for your contribution to the world's body of literature. If its not available to society when the payback is supposed to occur, why should society give them any gift of protection. If you DRM it, you're free game. Sounds fair to me.