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Hi,

It seems that for DRM there's an everlasting supply of morons who aren't smart enough to do any research or form their own opinion, who just believe the crud that some other moron said.

Let me make it simple...

If your hardware and software supports DRM, and if you pay for some DRM content, then you can play the DRM content.

If your hardware or software doesn't support DRM, or if you don't pay for DRM content, then you can't play the DRM content.

DRM has nothing to do with "non-DRM" media, and if you've got a pirated copy of anything that works without DRM then DRM won't do anything.

If you switch to an OS that doesn't support DRM, then the only difference it makes is that you won't be able to play DRM content that you've paid for.

If you don't like DRM, then don't buy DRM content. If you don't like Microsoft then there's plenty of valid reasons you could use without using misinformed FUD.

-Brendan

Too simple. Let's take apart your over-simplification ...



Some DRM content. The particular type that matches your crippled hardware/software. Not all DRM content.

Think "Plays for sure" ... Suuuuuure it does.



True enough as far as it goes ... but as I said that is only a way oversimplified part of the story.

The observation that you miss is this ... every piece of equipment out there can play content that has no DRM. That is a massive market.

Only Vista machines can play content that has Vista DRM applied. That is as yet a comparatively tiny market.

As long as Vista remains poorly adopted, a content provider would be insane to offer his content only in the form which has Vista DRM applied. He can sell that only to people who are running Vista. That cuts out the vast majority of the potential market.

Right now, it is far better for a content provider to offer non-DRM content to the wider market, even in the face of piracy, rather than offer it to the very restricted market comprising only people who want to play content only on their Vista machine and nowhere else.

Hence, avoiding Vista helps to keep the Vista-DRM-enabled-equipment target audience small and unattractive to content providers, and hence impedes the onset of universal DRM.



Debatable. Very debatable. Using Vista, try to rip a track from a CD you have legally purchased to .mp3 (without any DRM) and send it to your friend who does not run Vista (say runs a Mac or Linux box). See if you can do it so that your friend can hear the result.



... and you will not expand the set of machines that are Vista-DRM-capable, and hence help to keep the market for Vista-DRM-content unattractively small.



Brendan, if you are going to fling accusations of "FUD" at others, make absolutely sure you have told the whole story yourself ... because otherwise you are very likely to get "MS apologist and lapdog" accusations thrown right back at you.

Edited 2009-02-03 09:25 UTC

To get rid of DRM totally, you should probably not stop at not buying DRM:ed material, but instead stop buying any records at all, go to movies, or concerts arranged by companies that have DRM protected material on their product list. If people did that DRM would be dead tomorrow, and now that most record companies are moving away from DRM this is actually possible, without living in a world of silence.

However, this have very little to do with the lack of success for Vista in business, after all, how many people listen to DRM proteced material for a living.

The reason for the failure is of course that most companies allready had a well tested functioning OS already. They will upgrade when XP is no longer supported, if I remember correctly that is 2011. It is also quite likely that Microsoft will extend XP support beond that date due to customer demand. When they upgrade they will go for whatever OS Microsoft offer at that time.

Which allowed Windows Media Player and all the mp3 player companies that baught into Play For Sure to keep on working perfectly after Microsoft aborted the technology infavor of a new DRM bound to the Zune? You mean like that kind of "if you baught the DRM content, you can play it anywhere" kind of fair use?

Maybe you mean the way hdmi requires DRM'd hardware to get full resolution out of your blueray and hd-dvd media where "uncertified" hardware would play that same content at full resolution if it wasn't artificially limited to lower resolutions.

I'm just trying to get a grasp of how DRM adds benefits and value to the end user.. you know.. the law abiding consumer that is supposed to be the reason the market exists in the first play.