Tech And Hollywood Form Coalition Of The Pointless

from the this-sounds-like...-SDMI dept

This has been tried before without much success, but that doesn't really matter. A group of (large) tech companies and movie studios have now teamed up to create a "coalition" to come up with copy protection schemes. Apparently, Cory Doctorow's speech about why DRM is bad for everyone hasn't had much of an impact -- even on folks at Microsoft where he gave the talk. They're included in this "coalition" that seems suspiciously short on smaller companies. It's easy to see why, of course. Those smaller companies don't want to get locked into some proprietary, expensive technology that doesn't work well and only serves to piss off their customers. It's only larger companies who seem to think that protecting obsolete business models is more important than innovating and embracing new business models.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 14 Jul 2004 @ 3:17am

    Conversely

    Bigger companies that survive know how to protect their intellectual property, while the tough-talking small fish get their ideas copied elsewhere, and disappear.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Avergage Joe, 14 Jul 2004 @ 4:43am

      Re: Conversely

      The truly HUGE companies i.e. Micro$oft, got that big BECAUSE of people copying their software and spreading it.

      I watched Micro$oft since 1984, and have been using their products for over 20 years. I have only purchased 1 operating system for home use, yet have influenced businesses to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Micro$oft software.

      Protecting intellectual property is one thing, but hurting innovation ans squashing competition are just bad for the entire economy.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        dorpus, 14 Jul 2004 @ 11:26am

        Re: Conversely

        So tell me, for every microsoft, how many "good" freeware/shareware programs are there that get copied profusely, then fade into obscurity?

        link to this | view in chronology ]


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