Dumb DRM will fail in a user-created content environment

[andygates]

A while back, I noticed a trend in our heavy media files: For the first time, user-created content had topped media-produced content.  In short, there were more home movies than there were MP3 rips.  Which is why I'm genuinely surprised that Western Digital have launched a portable hard-drive with crippled file sharing.  It's dumb file-type stuff, so you can share your holiday photos but not your holiday movies.  Only copyright-breakers share movies, after all.

Now, that seems like an annoying-but-understandable thing to do in a shiny dumbed-down version of the world where only media output matters.  But from what I've seen of my own users' data space, it seems glaringly daft.  Regardless of your stance on DRM and file-sharing and all those hot-button issues, there's a lot of 2.0 fat content.  This product isn't protected: It's just plain broken. 

Comments

[despaer.livejournal.com]

Did see this and did wonder why they had done it. Presumably the CEO's of all the media companies will order one each and then.. umm...

I simply couldn't see what you, as a purchaser, were getting for your money to make up for mot being able to shift media files around. Have I missed something?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well, you can shift *some* content. Just not all - and I think they're thinking like techies. Techies think about file types. Punters think about stuff in contexts - "wimbleball stuff" say, with GPX, doc, saved web, JPG photos and AVI and MOV movies.