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Federal Trade Commission To Scrutinize DRM
Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations." The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM" and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."
Video games are by far the worst candidate for this discussion imho.
There is very little case law protecting consumer fair use with video games, as compared with audio and video.
This is a heavy bet on weak prospects.
Assuming the FTC does determine a need is required for video games, this will provide definitive and hefty leverage to expand it to music and video media.
If it does not, and it's a high likelihood the FTC determines it does not, it will be MUCH harder to press the issue on, for instance, the fact that blu-ray media will black peoples' screens at random due to undocumented HDCP issues.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Truly a case of Uncle Sam's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, considering the recent creation of a Copyright Czar.
At least Apple is moving in the right direction, announcing yesterday that it will drop DRM from it's tracks.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4811674a28.html (and elsewhere)
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
At the very least, the FTC should make it illegal to advertise any product infected with DRM as a "sale" as opposed to a "rental" or "lease". As it's impossible to own them, that's false advertising.
Yes, that means that everyone from Wal-Mart to the local mom-and-pop would have to change their advertising, in-store displays, and receipt printouts. That's a problem for them to work out with their suppliers, though.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
When I hear that the Government wants to look into something to protect the Consumer I know it's going to be bend over time for the Consumer as the Government gets together with Business to screw us all over. DRM and all of that crap needs to go away but it won't, it'll get the government gloss over to mollify those of us who are angry, they'll give it a better Orwellian name and call it a day.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I think you could make the argument that a recession makes for extreme competition, and its quite likely that it could turn out that DRM simply has to be dropped because a) it requires more money to actually DRM enable a product, particularly in testing, and b) there might be enough of a critical mass of consumers shopping for content based on the absence of DRM.
We won't really have a complete victory, though, until we see Microsoft drop entering those silly license key numbers for its products.
This is my sig.
I would actually like that solution very much.
It still has quite a lot of bad sides of DRM but at least we would have some non-corporate organization keeping the server up and eliminating the risk that corporation loses interest and DRM products won't work.
For any who think that government is no more trustworthy in this than corporations... Not only do I disagree but it doesn't matter. If there is gov run DRM server that goes down, corporations can (if they have the interest) set up their own servers again. If corporation's DRM server goes down, government isn't there to pick the pieces.
So I for one have little (read: not "none". I still doubt those products would work well on the platfrom I'm writing this from.) problems with the idea of government ran DRM server.
Lately that's meant that industry heavies are busy trying to stuff the panel with their own 'experts', doesn't it?
And then three months after this is all done with, we'll start seeing stories about how a quarter of the panelists have been discovered as previously employed by one of the RIAA's shadow groups, in addition to several other panelists receipt of airline tickets to hong kong (as well as an all-expenses paid week there for a meeting) as well as other weakly disguised "gifts" being scrutinized.
What amazes me is they continue to get away with this same old game, time and time again. This wouldn't be a problem if the followup had some teeth to it. What do you do when this all comes to light after the event? Remove them from the panel? Fat lot of good that does after they've "made their recommendations" etc.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Bit I want to purchase it. I want the game and the publisher wants my money. I just don't want it bundled with the DRM. We're both losing out here!
But if I complain, and if they listen, and they release without DRM, we'll both be richer! Win, win!