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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."
Apparently, according to this study, not as much as if it were just ONE child:
In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.
"We cannot wrap our minds around two people as well as around one," said Mr. Slovic.
This happened before. And it will happen as long as people buy cripplified content. ANY content that requires you to contact its maker before it plays has the chance to follow this road. No contact, no content.
This will happen again, I'm sure. Whenever some media company goes out of biz, whenever some media company decides that they can make more money by disabling everything they already sold, this will strike again. And more people will get pissed.
Unfortunately at the company that did it, not DRM itself. But given time, people will learn. People are used to "buying" content. They're used to buying a DVD and being able to play it 'til the earth stops turning. Changing this model will not go without resistance. It will take a while for the masses to notice that seemingly minor difference, but they will.
Unfortunately that takes time. Whether it takes too long we'll see. It will sooner or later fall back on them, though. People will stop buying content, fearing that it will some day stop to "work".
So what I started to do was to do some spinning myself. Whenever some friend of mine tries to buy something DRMified, I remind him of the time when whatever DRM crippled content backfired on him. Yes, it's another company, but it also got DRM, it just MIGHT do the same, ya know... Yes, it's a lie. Still, for some odd reason my conscience gives me an A-OK for it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't give copyright protection to publications that use copy protection. DRM -> PD. Let publishers (and their markets) decide which mutually-exclusive way to go.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.