BT store’s Windows DRM
p2pnet.net News:- Bram Cohen has confirmed in an interview that content on the upcoming BitTorrent Video Store is going to be loaded with Windows DRM, which means restrictions for all and Mac & Linux users are going to be left out in the cold. What fun!
When asked by Michael Calore of Wired News if the content on the new video store would contain DRM and if it would be cross-platform compatible, Cohen said, “we’re rolling out with some content DRM’d, using Windows DRM.” By this he also made it clear that content from the store would only play on Windows computers. The company seems to have no plans to expand their offering to users of other OSes.
Windows DRMWindows DRM has been completely left behind in the portable media player market. The iPod can’t play content restricted (read: infected) by Microsoft’s little virus, and neither can Microsoft’s very own Zune! So, the only consumers who’ll be able to watch videos they have purchased from the BitTorrent Video Store away from their computers will be those who own Creative, Dell, Archos or any one of the other compatible devices. This is, assuming the content from the store will be protected with Janus, Microsoft’s Windows DRM for portable devices. If it isn’t, it won’t play on any portable device at all.
In September of this year Ashwin Navin, the co-founder of BitTorrent Inc said that his company foresees a future without DRM. Although, even then, the company had said that they would use DRM, Navin also made it clear that it would only be in the early stages. Let’s hope the POA hasn’t changed.
Navin made his standpoint on DRM quite clear when he said that “the bottom line is that DRM is bad for the content provider and it’s bad for the consumer.” About foreseeing a future without DRM, he said that he thinks “the future will not be marked by digital rights management. It will be marked by advertising-supported content that’s clear of DRM.” The inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen too says that the company is “very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces,” and that they are “educating [their] content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.”
To be fair, BitTorrent Inc is only walking down the path of limiting consumers’ rights because it is being forced to. The company is clearly against DRM. According to Cohen, it is the only way they have been able to strike deals with content creators. He says this is “at the insistence of [their] content partners.”
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
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December 5th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Any music site/model that as a choice forces drm standards that are not open and that do not allow interoperability between existing mobile music players (ipod) are doomed to a quick failure.
All of the major media players support mp3. None of the major music players support the proprietary drm of any of the other players.
Today drm is not about protecting the rights of the artist; it is about selling hardware and software, as well preventing the disintermediation of old world distribution channels .
If any of the major software and hardware makers decided to release their drm formats to one another there would be no drm issues. If this scenario were played out it would not matter what format you choose or which player you purchased.
A unified drm solution puts the artist and the consumer in control of the distribution channel. If an artist has to go to a major media company to have there content distributed in the predominant drm format for the most popular player; who is in control of distribution. Certainly not the artist, and certainly not the consumer.
At this point choosing a drm format that cannot be played with the player with the highest market penetration rate would be a choice that would render your content un playable by most of the current market for music downloads.
One thing to understand is that even if an artist chooses to use any of the current drm standards, this will not prevent anyone from recording the music or from finding a way to crack the drm. Any protection that the artist perceives that they have is an illusion.
It is only a matter of time before there is an open, unified and real digital rights management system that allows all music to be played regardless of player (And this may mean that a new one needs to be created) or software. Once this point is reached artist and consumers will become the distribution channel.