Digital Rights Management- Do you think companies should put DRM on products?

[peterb]

<----snip People have been "format shifting", at the very least since the widespread inception and adoption of the audio cassette. How many people bought LPs, recorded them on tape and used them in the car? And that's been going on for, what, best part of 50 years. has anyone ever been taken to court over it? Not that I'm aware of. snip--->

Although that was partly because with analogue recording, it was difficult to prevent. You probably remember the proposal to add a 'tax' on the sale of blank cassettes to be paid to The Performing Rights Society - subsequently dropped as it caused a furore similar to the DRM issue today. However I think something similar was implemented in Canada.

<---- snip What they are after is people that don't bother to buy it in the first place and simply acquire pirated tracks, and much more, people who provide the pirated tracks for others to acquire. And even that has been going on for decades. Recording an LP from a mate, for instance. All that's really changed is the scale of the distribution model, due to digital copying and communications infrastructures, but it's the scale of operations resulting from that that's casing them the headache. snip --->

Good read on that subject today - basically saying that the enertainment industry is its own worst enemy.

[kalniel]

Good read on that subject today - basically saying that the enertainment industry is its own worst enemy.

If your only motivation is format shifting, sure.

But that's not the reason most people pirate - maybe it's a higher portion of audio pirates though. Studios have made games available in precisely the format that people are downloading them, and it hasn't had any effect.

[Lee H]

Here is another good Read from Peter Serafinowicz about why he downloads even the stuff that he is in because of DRM.

Now seeing as he's come public about his downloading habits now and even admitted to downloading lots of things, do you think he'll start to get letters like normal users asking for payment or face court action?

[kalniel]

Here is another good Read from Peter Serafinowicz about why he downloads even the stuff that he is in because of DRM.

Did you give the right link? In the one above it talks about his downloading things simply because it's not in the right format, as in the article peterb linked (which linked to this one). Where a film is available in the right format he buys it (eg from iTunes). Nothing to do with DRM.