Posts by Andrew Orlowski 1435 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2006
My bet is that DRM will be a non-issue for most ordinary people - who are not represented here - but UV may still fail abjectly because of poor technical implementation.
It may be too hard to use, or they haven't thought about security enough, or some other wrinkle.
Now they need to get rid of the insulting piracy nags.
That's not a useful generalisation, DRM is contingent on the rights granted, these vary in each instance in practice. The proposition in its entirety is what is judged.
I never bought DRM digital music, the convenience of the instant purchase was outweighed by 1) the ecosystem lock-in and lack of portability, and 2) my political disapproval of DRM.
Neither the ecosystem lock-in nor political views stopped lots of people buying DRM music. Once DRM was lifted I bought lots of digital music online.
In UV the ecosystem issue does not apply. A consumer gains more "rights" than they have today. So you are left with the political issue. Which is something most people don't have, and has to be measured against the convenience.
Lots of the usual paranoia and some good points.
- Hollywood doesn't want to kill the nice margins on BluRay discs just as the market is taking off. Bandwidth is nowhere near good enough to make HD home cinema streaming a comparable experience. But it also likes the margins on impulse purchases of streaming and downloads, for people who just want to watch something.
- I can't see how it could kill the secondary market. You can still sell the DVD/BluRay disc on, the redemption code (if redeemed) won't work, but the disc will still play the movie, so long as you haven't scratched it.
Some paranoia is justified, forcing legal customers to sit through two minutes of unskippable FBI piracy warnings is a fantastic reward for us giving them money.
Well, let's say there's $30bn of untapped value lying around from potential subscriptions, direct or indirect (somebody could bundle access with another product or service).
And then there's $5bn more to be squeezed out of data-mining, behavioural shenanigans, etc. Maybe.
Then the incentive is to chase the $30bn. Investors want to maximise their return, they're not charities or unicorn farmers.
Yep.
Before Facebook most person-to-person non-realtime messaging was done over email. Public protocols, mostly.
Now it's done via Facebook - walled garden.
Disussed here:
Facebook: Privatising the internet, one Poke at a time
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/16/facebook_embrace_and_extend_email_hubris/print.html
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Perhaps you could follow the example set by others and declare your industry interests - I've nothing against PV installers chipping in, it's great that they self-indentify.
"But the move to renewables and reduced consumption has been a major contributor to the progress since the mid-90s."
That's a weird definition of progress, as progress means some combination of ordinary people getting a) better off and b) more free. CO2 emissions are going up here quite sharply. Renewables aren't going to help.
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