I have a friend who recently bought video editing software (Power Director 5) and a DVD burner so he could transfer his VHS library to DVDs. He was able to capture the video to the computer, dump it into a timeline, and even create an MPEG-2, but when it came time to burn, I would only burn the copyright notice.
I find it fascinating that the video editing software has detection code that recognizes a copyright screen. Since the fair-use of copying a video depends entirely on the ownership of the video, and since the software has no way of determining ownership, it seems quite presumptuous that their software should try to stop you at all. Certainly, I never saw "Prevents you from making copies of your own stuff" on the "features" list.
On a related note, my father-in-law, John, bought an MP3 player recently. He tried to copy his music from his hard drive to his media player. The media player just displayed "Permission Denied" and would not play. Turns out he had ripped his CDs with Windows Media Player which, by default, enables a "copy protection" feature. Since defaults are *supposed* to reflect the most commonly desired behavior, one must wonder who, at Microsoft, thinks users don't want to be able to copy their own music to their own player. Oh but wait...I'm assuming they care primarily about the user...my mistake.
All this invariably brings me back to software created by users, for users: open source. :-) Sure, it can be rough around the edges, but it doesn't decide for you which rights you should have.
Posted by enigma at January 17, 2006 09:58 AMAh, the bliss. The feeling that when I get something out of a shrink wrapped box, that it will work the firs time. I will not have to tinker with it, I will not have to rework something on my system, and I will not have to recompile the brain of my operating system to use it. Such bliss comes at a price. For instance, I have to buy a very expensive to use it, because the pour design hogs system resources. Or, make sure I have the right hardware, otherwise the drivers for the old hard wear that was released three months ago (and therefore obsolete) will not be usable under the new system. And, once you have scarified your time and money, the computer gods will shine on you and allow you to open AOL, download your spam, and infect your computer with viruses. And if you are lucky, you will also get to take your computer into a repair depot to have it replaced with a working version with the same crappy software.
This, sadly, is the way of the consumer. I pay good money for something, and I pay good money to have it fixed. I do not need to be an expert or know how to fix it, because that it what a warrantee or service agreement if for. And when that term has expired, I either renew it or buy a new machine: Capitalism at its finest
No wonder American students are some of the worst in the industrialized world. Look what we teach them by example as a society.
Yes, DRM sucks. That's one of the reasons I love Linux. Although how long free software will continue to interoperate ... unknown.
Posted by: Steve at January 17, 2006 03:48 PM