The Geek Professor » DRM

The Truth About Piracy

Jeremy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:26:59 +0000

Just because I don't download movies doesn't mean I don't think about it pretty much for this reason:

If they made a DVD player with a giant red "play the freaking movie right freaking now" button, I'd buy it. Wouldn't you?

Beware Blu-Ray Surprises

Jeremy — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:31:21 +0000

Simply put, media should be media, programs should be programs. Putting code or commands into media like movies, music, e-mail etc allows for viruses or worse and no one should have to worry about that. Well, worry. If you put the new Blu-ray Iron Man movie into your computer it will try to connect to the Internet and download something (some horrible DRM program probably?).

RIAA Victim becomes Victor!

Jeremy — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:58:42 +0000

The Thomas v. Captiol case was something we all watched with horror as some poor woman was slapped with a fine of $220,000 simply for having downloaded some music. However, that case has recently been overturned due to the fact that the RIAA's argument that merely having copyrighted music available for download is a crime.

Spore Slapped With Class Action Suit Over Invasive DRM

Jeremy — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:26:31 +0000

It's hardly surprising that there has been a huge backlash against Spore due to the decision to include DRM. I'm a little surprised, but very happy, that someone had the tenacity to file a class action lawsuit against them for it. In the end, no company has the right to control your game playing to this degree. It's a shame that a game from such a well-renowned company would be smeared and tarnished because their foolish decision to treat their customers like criminals. I guarantee that if Starcraft II does something like this, I will pass it by only buying it after some enterprising hacker releases a fix sans DRM that I can download. (H/T to slashdot for the link)

Western Digital Puts Restrictions On Types of Files You Can Copy

Jeremy — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:55:29 +0000

From the, we're so stupid, we don't need competition to put us out of business, department comes a story of a new Western Digital Hard drive that has Digital Rights Management (DRM) built in. It's an external hard drive which is advertised as making it easy to store and share your files, as long as those files aren't music or movies. Don't buy these. If you did buy them, return them.

DRM in Game Systems

Jeremy — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:37:33 +0000

I had to laugh when I read this today at Penny-Arcade:

All of this confusion for paying customers, so that pirates will be detained an additional fifteen minutes before they descend, their scythes awhirl.

For those who don't know, Penny-Arcade is a site that has been doing comics centered on the gaming industry for years. They are well known in the community and make enough money now to basically play games all day.

This commentary refers to the various tricks and traps companies use to try to prevent people from pirating games that don't work and may never work. Ordinary players are bothered and inconvenienced essentially for no reason.

10 Reasons why DRM doesn’t work

Jeremy — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:46:08 +0000

DRM or copy protective technology used on things like music CDs and movies doesn’t work. LearnOutLoud explains why.