Ah, well we can all thank the paranoid movie studios for this.
@ JakeTheRock,
The reason Jobs has called for the removal of DRM on music files is because the music labels already put out their artists' music in DRM-free form on CDs. It was totally hypocritical when they claimed (and still do) that legal, DRM-free digital downloads would lead to piracy when they were selling (and still are) millions of unprotected CDs.
On the other hand, movies have never really been available in DRM-free form, so Jobs, nor anyone else, can make nearly as good an argument for removing DRM from that medium. At the end of the day, the movie studios hold the copyrights, so they can do what they want in terms of copy protection.
With that said, I don't really get the point of HDCP, which requires an HDCP-enabled display. Why do they want to protect the output device? Anyone have any insight on this?
Well said. Apple isn't doing this, and neither is Microsoft. HOLLYWOOD is doing this, and they have been doing this for YEARS. Even VHS movies were copy protected. So in order for Apple to offer HD content, it must be HDCP protected. The article fails to mention if the movie was the HD version or the SD version. Most likely, it was the HD version, and the HDCP protection is probably in the file itself, not the MacBook. Even if the MacBook offered HDMI instead of DisplayPort, it would still have the HDCP protection.
Now that iTunes is offering HD content, HOLLYWOOD requires HDCP protection, just like they do with HDTV broadcasts. They want the HDCP protection to eliminate piracy and copying of the digital content through the output. For example, if your HD cable box is not connected to an HDCP compliant device (Display), the signal is downgraded to 480p resolution, or not displayed at all.
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
...
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
...
This is not true, and it is the crux of your argument. You don't own the movie. You own the right to play it for yourself. That is all. You cannot show it to a paying audiance. You cannot copy it for others.
The physical disk is yours--I suppose you can eat that if you like, but the information encoded in it is NOT yours. Sorry.
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
1) You buy an apple. The second you pay for it, you have the right to do anything you want with it. You can eat it, you can throw in the garbage, hell you can put it right back on the shelf. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
Uh, no you can't.
Try taking the install DVDs that you PAID for, making copies and selling them on eBay.
Try bludgeoning someone to death with a MacBook and then tell the police "But I paid for the MacBook. I can do anything I want with it. ANYTHING." (Scary laugh)
You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's rights.
That includes intellectual property rights and the right to not be bludgeoned to death.
It is one thing to have HDCP on the new Macbooks. It is another thing to have it enabled for iTunes movies (as that teacher trying to watch Hellboy found out). I thought it would be a while before the movie studio was going to turn it on. Looks like Apple is leading the way to enabling HDCP with iTunes. You would think they would warn the customers before they turned on HDCP?
In the same way that we all pay a theft-tax on clothes, because of the people that leave stores without paying, those of us that pay for legal content pay a piracy-tax, because of people that download/copy content illegally.
So, if we want to minimize that piracy tax, we need DRM - both on files and on cables. The problem is that the definition of fair use needs to be updated to match a world of digial content and the internet, such that piracy is thwarted, but users can get their fair use.
Until there is a major programme to review the electronic landscape, classify devices ( distributors, downloaders, players, etc ) and redefine fair use so that is implementable with common technology, pirates will rip-off the content-owners, who will pass the cost onto us non-criminals.
Not only do we pay more for our content, but I know that the cost of each iPod in Europe includes a piracy-tax applied to the price. Also there is a human cost: we saw the content companies convince the police to go into people's homes and arrest housewives and teenagers during the Napster years, now the border guards are searching through our laptops and iPods.
Until then, DRM doesn't work, and DRM-free doesn't work.
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
No, that's wrong. you can't do whatever you want with it. If it is a region 1 DVD you can only watch it in a region 1 DVD player. As well you can not copy it to VHS as macrovision prevents this. In fact you are not supposed to be able to copy them at all.
There are rules for DVDs even. Some people may get around them, but there are rules.
Yeah, this is pretty much completely wrong. The problem is with your number (2): You own the DVD, but you don't own Wall-E, and you CANNOT do whatever you want with the DVD's content (including, by the way, fast forwarding past the portion of the DVD that lists all the things you're not allowed to do with it--or hadn't you noticed?). You can give the DVD to someone else, but not the files on it. You can't show the DVD to a room full of people and charge money for it. (People do that all the time, but hey, that doesn't make it legal...)
To a certain extent, what's going on generally is that we're moving toward the equivalent of a society in which automobiles have chips that prevent them from moving faster than the legal speed limit. The mere fact that every driver on the road speeds, and 99.9% of them do so with impunity, does not mean that they have the right to do so, and if cars suddenly began to prevent them from speeding, there wouldn't really be any available non-childish, non-selfish argument against that technology...
@Bageljoey, Leonard and others who have respectfully argued against:
All of your counterexamples are not true. You CAN do all of the things you've mentioned (except Leonard's region example): you just can't do them legally. You are not supposed to.
That's, again, my point here: I never said it was legal, or right/wrong. Exactly as you mention in your own example, my issue is that those decisions are being taken away from the consumer: in scenario 3 your choice has been made for you. In scenario 1 and 2, you still have that choice. Your ability to choose how to use things, whether legal or not, is being eroded. You're not supposed to speed while driving, you're not supposed to be reading and replying on a AI forum during work hours, but we're not agreeing that the choice to do these things should be left to us?
Well, this a another phenomenal reason to avoid ITMS and just use netflix. If netflix gets their act together and start streaming even more material, they are going to bury iTunes. I can't really say Im gonna miss it either...
For example, the terms stipulate that high-definition digital video sources must not transmit protected content to non-HDCP-compliant receivers, as described above, and DVD-Audio content must be restricted to CD-audio quality or less when played back over non-HDCP-digital audio outputs.
I don't get this audio part. Does that mean protected audio content or just any DVD audio content? I author DVDs for my clients all the time with our original video and audio and without DRM obviously. What happens in this case?
Well said. Apple isn't doing this, and neither is Microsoft. HOLLYWOOD is doing this, and they have been doing this for YEARS. Even VHS movies were copy protected. So in order for Apple to offer HD content, it must be HDCP protected. The article fails to mention if the movie was the HD version or the SD version. Most likely, it was the HD version, and the HDCP protection is probably in the file itself, not the MacBook. Even if the MacBook offered HDMI instead of DisplayPort, it would still have the HDCP protection.
Now that iTunes is offering HD content, HOLLYWOOD requires HDCP protection, just like they do with HDTV broadcasts. They want the HDCP protection to eliminate piracy and copying of the digital content through the output. For example, if your HD cable box is not connected to an HDCP compliant device (Display), the signal is downgraded to 480p resolution, or not displayed at all.
Unfortunately the teacher trying to watch Hellboy didn't seem to have the option of watching the movie constrained to 480p resolution. The dialog just said the movie couldn't be played. That part doesn't seem right. I haven't purchased any movies from iTunes but it seems like if HDCP is enabled, there should be some warnings / explanation?
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
1) You buy an apple. The second you pay for it, you have the right to do anything you want with it. You can eat it, you can throw in the garbage, hell you can put it right back on the shelf. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
3) You buy Wall-E off a digital movie vendor. Now, if you paid for it, it's yours right? You can do whatever you want with it right? If you wanted, you could take the file and delete it. So why is it that someone else is getting to decide if and how you can watch it? Who knows - maybe in clicking through those terms of service, people agreed that they didn't actually own those digitial items they paid money for and figured they'd own like a real DVD.
Well, if you buy a Wall-E DVD there are still plenty of things you CAN'T do with it, like project it on a big screen and charge people to watch it, rent it out for money, copy it, etc.
And your argument that if you buy a digital copy of a movie you should be able to do with it what you like breaks down also with a very simple counterexample: supposing you RENT a movie from a digital store? What you do is exactly the same, you download file, and have a copy of some digital bits on your hard drive. Sure, you can delete that file if you want, but if the DRM enforces conditions such as you can only decrypt and play the movie once, you can only play it for 7 days from time of purchase, etc. then presumably you wouldn't complain too much because you knew what you were getting. In both cases the situation is the same. You're not "buying the movie" but buying the right to do something specific (play a movie in a particular way on a particular machine, play a movie in a particular way on a particular machine for a particular amount of time).
The problem is that collectively we're transferring the concept of "buying" or "renting" a physical DVD and extrapolating that to a digital copy but the situation is very different. It's much more akin to purchasing a license for software.
I could write some software and grant you a license to use it subject to any conditions I care to impose. Perhaps there's an annual or monthly license fee. Perhaps you're limited to how many users can use it or how many transactions per second you can perform or how big an image file you can process. That surely is up to me (though clearly, you don't have to purchase the software under those license terms if you don't want to).
What people selling digital content (whether software or movies or anything else) SHOULD be required to do, however, is make it VERY clear what you are or are not purchasing. Don't make people think they're "buying a movie" the same way they buy a DVD and can do with it what they want (such as playing it through a VGA projector) if you're not actually going to let them do that as that's false advertising. The iTunes Store, and other digital stores too of course, should be forced to have a big warning sticker saying RESTRICTED RIGHTS on the purchase page (which links to a summary page that says exactly what you are and are not allowed to do with that copy).
In the same way that we all pay a theft-tax on clothes, because of the people that leave stores without paying, those of us that pay for legal content pay a piracy-tax, because of people that download/copy content illegally.
So, if we want to minimize that piracy tax, we need DRM - both on files and on cables. The problem is that the definition of fair use needs to be updated to match a world of digial content and the internet, such that piracy is thwarted, but users can get their fair use.
Until there is a major programme to review the electronic landscape, classify devices ( distributors, downloaders, players, etc ) and redefine fair use so that is implementable with common technology, pirates will rip-off the content-owners, who will pass the cost onto us non-criminals.
Not only do we pay more for our content, but I know that the cost of each iPod in Europe includes a piracy-tax applied to the price. Also there is a human cost: we saw the content companies convince the police to go into people's homes and arrest housewives and teenagers during the Napster years, now the border guards are searching through our laptops and iPods.
Until then, DRM doesn't work, and DRM-free doesn't work.
( Steve Jobs for CTO ? )
Yep, we need a way that the person who created the content gets paid reasonably for it, that the middle men don't get an unfair share, and that the consumer can do anything within reason to use it.
Trouble is the middle men usually want more than their fair share and want to control how you can use it.
Having copy protection support in the machines' DisplayPort hardware doesn't bother me so much--it's part of the DisplayPort standard. But what does bother me is that Apple is USING that copy protection in the movies they supply via iTunes! Obviously that decision is likely from the content owners, not from Apple themselves, but I'd sure be unhappy if I couldn't watch a movie on my big external screen!
Apple stands up against DRM all the time. They don't always win. What computer company are you thinking of switching to that does a better job than Apple at getting content owners to abandon DRM?
It's bad news, but it's a stretch to think that it's Apple who drives the use of DRM. Apple OPPOSES DRM, publicly, and in some cases they get their way. Look at music--the Store couldn't have ever existed without DRM, but once it took off, Apple has gotten EMI to abandon it. Others may follow suit, or they may choose to keep punishing Apple's success, but either way, the DRM on those other songs is not Apple's choice. And looking at movies, it seems that SOME movies have this HDCP protection and some don't, so I think once again you can bet it's the content owner, not Apple, who is behind it.
the cynic in me thinks that iTunes Plus was just a ruse for APple to charge more for already well overpriced content.
Back when I was a little kid the only place you could see a movie was in a theatre. This attached a firm price to the experience of watching a movie. Then came videos and the value of seeing a movie dropped because a single price allowed you and all your friends to watch it over and over again. The picture and sound sucked so there was still some value in seeing some movies in a theatre. DVDs further reduced the value of that movie because the home experience more closely rivaled the theatre and the picture didn't degrade over time like that on a tape.
Today the experience of watching a movie is worth no more than $2: less than it was when I was going to movies as a child 35 years ago. The movie studios, by releasing films from the theatres, destroyed their value. Asking people to invest hundreds of dollars in hardware for the dubious privilege of paying $15-20 for a digital copy of a movie that probably isn't worth watching more than once is seriously delusional.
Telling the few people who are willing to spend that money that they must now spend hundreds more on "compliant" hardware is both insulting and a little bit crazy.
It's no wonder the number of people obtaining content from free sources is continually rising.
Unfortunately the teacher trying to watch Hellboy didn't seem to have the option of watching the movie constrained to 480p resolution. The dialog just said the movie couldn't be played. That part doesn't seem right. I haven't purchased any movies from iTunes but it seems like if HDCP is enabled, there should be some warnings / explanation?
That's the part of the story that confuses me and makes me suspect there's a bug in play.
I thought HDCP should restrict content to 480p for non-HDCP devices. Can't remember where I read that though.
Comments
Ah, well we can all thank the paranoid movie studios for this.
@ JakeTheRock,
The reason Jobs has called for the removal of DRM on music files is because the music labels already put out their artists' music in DRM-free form on CDs. It was totally hypocritical when they claimed (and still do) that legal, DRM-free digital downloads would lead to piracy when they were selling (and still are) millions of unprotected CDs.
On the other hand, movies have never really been available in DRM-free form, so Jobs, nor anyone else, can make nearly as good an argument for removing DRM from that medium. At the end of the day, the movie studios hold the copyrights, so they can do what they want in terms of copy protection.
With that said, I don't really get the point of HDCP, which requires an HDCP-enabled display. Why do they want to protect the output device?
Well said. Apple isn't doing this, and neither is Microsoft. HOLLYWOOD is doing this, and they have been doing this for YEARS. Even VHS movies were copy protected. So in order for Apple to offer HD content, it must be HDCP protected. The article fails to mention if the movie was the HD version or the SD version. Most likely, it was the HD version, and the HDCP protection is probably in the file itself, not the MacBook. Even if the MacBook offered HDMI instead of DisplayPort, it would still have the HDCP protection.
Now that iTunes is offering HD content, HOLLYWOOD requires HDCP protection, just like they do with HDTV broadcasts. They want the HDCP protection to eliminate piracy and copying of the digital content through the output. For example, if your HD cable box is not connected to an HDCP compliant device (Display), the signal is downgraded to 480p resolution, or not displayed at all.
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
...
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
...
This is not true, and it is the crux of your argument. You don't own the movie. You own the right to play it for yourself. That is all. You cannot show it to a paying audiance. You cannot copy it for others.
The physical disk is yours--I suppose you can eat that if you like, but the information encoded in it is NOT yours. Sorry.
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
1) You buy an apple. The second you pay for it, you have the right to do anything you want with it. You can eat it, you can throw in the garbage, hell you can put it right back on the shelf. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
Uh, no you can't.
Try taking the install DVDs that you PAID for, making copies and selling them on eBay.
Try bludgeoning someone to death with a MacBook and then tell the police "But I paid for the MacBook. I can do anything I want with it. ANYTHING." (Scary laugh)
You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's rights.
That includes intellectual property rights and the right to not be bludgeoned to death.
So, if we want to minimize that piracy tax, we need DRM - both on files and on cables. The problem is that the definition of fair use needs to be updated to match a world of digial content and the internet, such that piracy is thwarted, but users can get their fair use.
Until there is a major programme to review the electronic landscape, classify devices ( distributors, downloaders, players, etc ) and redefine fair use so that is implementable with common technology, pirates will rip-off the content-owners, who will pass the cost onto us non-criminals.
Not only do we pay more for our content, but I know that the cost of each iPod in Europe includes a piracy-tax applied to the price. Also there is a human cost: we saw the content companies convince the police to go into people's homes and arrest housewives and teenagers during the Napster years, now the border guards are searching through our laptops and iPods.
Until then, DRM doesn't work, and DRM-free doesn't work.
( Steve Jobs for CTO ? )
[...]
You would think they would warn the customers before they turned on HDCP?
September, 9th 2008 ...
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
No, that's wrong. you can't do whatever you want with it. If it is a region 1 DVD you can only watch it in a region 1 DVD player. As well you can not copy it to VHS as macrovision prevents this. In fact you are not supposed to be able to copy them at all.
There are rules for DVDs even. Some people may get around them, but there are rules.
Yeah, this is pretty much completely wrong. The problem is with your number (2): You own the DVD, but you don't own Wall-E, and you CANNOT do whatever you want with the DVD's content (including, by the way, fast forwarding past the portion of the DVD that lists all the things you're not allowed to do with it--or hadn't you noticed?). You can give the DVD to someone else, but not the files on it. You can't show the DVD to a room full of people and charge money for it. (People do that all the time, but hey, that doesn't make it legal...)
To a certain extent, what's going on generally is that we're moving toward the equivalent of a society in which automobiles have chips that prevent them from moving faster than the legal speed limit. The mere fact that every driver on the road speeds, and 99.9% of them do so with impunity, does not mean that they have the right to do so, and if cars suddenly began to prevent them from speeding, there wouldn't really be any available non-childish, non-selfish argument against that technology...
@Bageljoey, Leonard and others who have respectfully argued against:
All of your counterexamples are not true. You CAN do all of the things you've mentioned (except Leonard's region example): you just can't do them legally. You are not supposed to.
That's, again, my point here: I never said it was legal, or right/wrong. Exactly as you mention in your own example, my issue is that those decisions are being taken away from the consumer: in scenario 3 your choice has been made for you. In scenario 1 and 2, you still have that choice. Your ability to choose how to use things, whether legal or not, is being eroded. You're not supposed to speed while driving, you're not supposed to be reading and replying on a AI forum during work hours, but we're not agreeing that the choice to do these things should be left to us?
For example, the terms stipulate that high-definition digital video sources must not transmit protected content to non-HDCP-compliant receivers, as described above, and DVD-Audio content must be restricted to CD-audio quality or less when played back over non-HDCP-digital audio outputs.
I don't get this audio part. Does that mean protected audio content or just any DVD audio content? I author DVDs for my clients all the time with our original video and audio and without DRM obviously. What happens in this case?
Well said. Apple isn't doing this, and neither is Microsoft. HOLLYWOOD is doing this, and they have been doing this for YEARS. Even VHS movies were copy protected. So in order for Apple to offer HD content, it must be HDCP protected. The article fails to mention if the movie was the HD version or the SD version. Most likely, it was the HD version, and the HDCP protection is probably in the file itself, not the MacBook. Even if the MacBook offered HDMI instead of DisplayPort, it would still have the HDCP protection.
Now that iTunes is offering HD content, HOLLYWOOD requires HDCP protection, just like they do with HDTV broadcasts. They want the HDCP protection to eliminate piracy and copying of the digital content through the output. For example, if your HD cable box is not connected to an HDCP compliant device (Display), the signal is downgraded to 480p resolution, or not displayed at all.
Unfortunately the teacher trying to watch Hellboy didn't seem to have the option of watching the movie constrained to 480p resolution. The dialog just said the movie couldn't be played. That part doesn't seem right. I haven't purchased any movies from iTunes but it seems like if HDCP is enabled, there should be some warnings / explanation?
The point is that they illustrate the same point - consider the three following scenarios:
1) You buy an apple. The second you pay for it, you have the right to do anything you want with it. You can eat it, you can throw in the garbage, hell you can put it right back on the shelf. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
2) You buy the Wall-E DVD. You paid for it, it's yours. You can (try to) eat it, you can watch it as many times as you want, on any DVD player, you can throw it in the garbage the second you get it, and you can give it to someone else. It is for all intents and purposes yours to do as you wish.
3) You buy Wall-E off a digital movie vendor. Now, if you paid for it, it's yours right? You can do whatever you want with it right? If you wanted, you could take the file and delete it. So why is it that someone else is getting to decide if and how you can watch it? Who knows - maybe in clicking through those terms of service, people agreed that they didn't actually own those digitial items they paid money for and figured they'd own like a real DVD.
Well, if you buy a Wall-E DVD there are still plenty of things you CAN'T do with it, like project it on a big screen and charge people to watch it, rent it out for money, copy it, etc.
And your argument that if you buy a digital copy of a movie you should be able to do with it what you like breaks down also with a very simple counterexample: supposing you RENT a movie from a digital store? What you do is exactly the same, you download file, and have a copy of some digital bits on your hard drive. Sure, you can delete that file if you want, but if the DRM enforces conditions such as you can only decrypt and play the movie once, you can only play it for 7 days from time of purchase, etc. then presumably you wouldn't complain too much because you knew what you were getting. In both cases the situation is the same. You're not "buying the movie" but buying the right to do something specific (play a movie in a particular way on a particular machine, play a movie in a particular way on a particular machine for a particular amount of time).
The problem is that collectively we're transferring the concept of "buying" or "renting" a physical DVD and extrapolating that to a digital copy but the situation is very different. It's much more akin to purchasing a license for software.
I could write some software and grant you a license to use it subject to any conditions I care to impose. Perhaps there's an annual or monthly license fee. Perhaps you're limited to how many users can use it or how many transactions per second you can perform or how big an image file you can process. That surely is up to me (though clearly, you don't have to purchase the software under those license terms if you don't want to).
What people selling digital content (whether software or movies or anything else) SHOULD be required to do, however, is make it VERY clear what you are or are not purchasing. Don't make people think they're "buying a movie" the same way they buy a DVD and can do with it what they want (such as playing it through a VGA projector) if you're not actually going to let them do that as that's false advertising. The iTunes Store, and other digital stores too of course, should be forced to have a big warning sticker saying RESTRICTED RIGHTS on the purchase page (which links to a summary page that says exactly what you are and are not allowed to do with that copy).
September, 9th 2008 ...
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html
Wow that is one long disclaimer, I never thought buying a movie could be so complicated. Welcome to the 21st century :-(
PS: I wonder how many AI posters are against this HDCP, but also keep asking for Blu-ray.
I was going to say also this is the same deal for Blu-ray, what are you all so surprised about.
In the same way that we all pay a theft-tax on clothes, because of the people that leave stores without paying, those of us that pay for legal content pay a piracy-tax, because of people that download/copy content illegally.
So, if we want to minimize that piracy tax, we need DRM - both on files and on cables. The problem is that the definition of fair use needs to be updated to match a world of digial content and the internet, such that piracy is thwarted, but users can get their fair use.
Until there is a major programme to review the electronic landscape, classify devices ( distributors, downloaders, players, etc ) and redefine fair use so that is implementable with common technology, pirates will rip-off the content-owners, who will pass the cost onto us non-criminals.
Not only do we pay more for our content, but I know that the cost of each iPod in Europe includes a piracy-tax applied to the price. Also there is a human cost: we saw the content companies convince the police to go into people's homes and arrest housewives and teenagers during the Napster years, now the border guards are searching through our laptops and iPods.
Until then, DRM doesn't work, and DRM-free doesn't work.
( Steve Jobs for CTO ? )
Yep, we need a way that the person who created the content gets paid reasonably for it, that the middle men don't get an unfair share, and that the consumer can do anything within reason to use it.
Trouble is the middle men usually want more than their fair share and want to control how you can use it.
Having copy protection support in the machines' DisplayPort hardware doesn't bother me so much--it's part of the DisplayPort standard. But what does bother me is that Apple is USING that copy protection in the movies they supply via iTunes! Obviously that decision is likely from the content owners, not from Apple themselves, but I'd sure be unhappy if I couldn't watch a movie on my big external screen!
Apple stands up against DRM all the time. They don't always win. What computer company are you thinking of switching to that does a better job than Apple at getting content owners to abandon DRM?
It's bad news, but it's a stretch to think that it's Apple who drives the use of DRM. Apple OPPOSES DRM, publicly, and in some cases they get their way. Look at music--the Store couldn't have ever existed without DRM, but once it took off, Apple has gotten EMI to abandon it. Others may follow suit, or they may choose to keep punishing Apple's success, but either way, the DRM on those other songs is not Apple's choice. And looking at movies, it seems that SOME movies have this HDCP protection and some don't, so I think once again you can bet it's the content owner, not Apple, who is behind it.
the cynic in me thinks that iTunes Plus was just a ruse for APple to charge more for already well overpriced content.
September, 9th 2008 ...
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html
the cynic in me thinks that iTunes Plus was just a ruse for APple to charge more for already well overpriced content.
Well, if you want to get more cynical, Steve Jobs is the largest individual shareholder of Disney.
Today the experience of watching a movie is worth no more than $2: less than it was when I was going to movies as a child 35 years ago. The movie studios, by releasing films from the theatres, destroyed their value. Asking people to invest hundreds of dollars in hardware for the dubious privilege of paying $15-20 for a digital copy of a movie that probably isn't worth watching more than once is seriously delusional.
Telling the few people who are willing to spend that money that they must now spend hundreds more on "compliant" hardware is both insulting and a little bit crazy.
It's no wonder the number of people obtaining content from free sources is continually rising.
Unfortunately the teacher trying to watch Hellboy didn't seem to have the option of watching the movie constrained to 480p resolution. The dialog just said the movie couldn't be played. That part doesn't seem right. I haven't purchased any movies from iTunes but it seems like if HDCP is enabled, there should be some warnings / explanation?
That's the part of the story that confuses me and makes me suspect there's a bug in play.
I thought HDCP should restrict content to 480p for non-HDCP devices. Can't remember where I read that though.