Why market forces can’t correct DRM
Cory Doctorow talks about why market forces can’t do anything about
DRM. DRM is an interoperability issue that only really exists when
devices try to talk to each other. Even worse, it can be
retroactively applied to machines you’ve already bought.
‘When this guy goes back to the store, what should he do to protect
his next investment? Say he buys an HP device next, having concluded
that Gateway won’t look out for his interests. He takes it home and
finds that it works fine for his purposes (maybe HP has a "better"
deal with HBO that will let him burn more-restricted DVDs from his HP
media-centre), then, a couple months later, the cablecaster switches
on another flag and suddenly his video won’t work.
Where’s the market-force here? Should he stop being an HBO customer? A
cable customer? A customer for only those PCs that he builds himself
and installs a copy of GNU/Linux on? ‘
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/24/why_marketforces_can.html
