The big content producers treat all their customers like criminals, and I sincerely hope this will come back on them and hurting them badly. Sony already felt the pain with the rootkit fiasco (they were literally infecting people’s PC with viruses through their audio CDs). And I hope customers will get more and more aware of it.

Personally I never bought a lot of CDs, but now I don’t buy any, because it’s only the honest customer that gets trouble because of DRM. The pirated DVD we bought on the street in China didn’t have any DRM and plays in any of our player, which is not the case of the DVD we buy in shops.

But what probably makes me the most angry is when I’m forced to watch an FBI piracy warning before a movie on a DVD (I even saw this in some cinema). The only people who have to see the warnings are the ones who buy DVDs.

But it’s getting much worse, with AACS and all the DRM crap that will get into HDTV. I was in the process of buying a TV recently, and although these LCD sets look very sexy, I didn’t get one because they would only make a difference with HD content and I don’t want the studios to completely control what I watch. I won’t be able to build myself a nice Linux-based media center and use it to watch HD, so without me. I will stay with DVD and it seems many people are thinking the same. A movement to boycott HD has started on the web.

Update: ArsTechnica comment on another consequence of AACS, the analog sunset.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 3:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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