Foul ball

Imagine you bought something, a car say, only to have it repossessed because the factory had closed down.

That, in essence, is what happened to Allan Wood, a baseball fan and sports writer who paid $280 to download a series of baseball videos. Major League Baseball, which sold the videos, then switched to a new (and incompatible) DRM copyright-protection system, which meant he could no longer view his $280 video collection. 

Videos bought from Major League Baseball today are not labelled with an expiry date, but it’s evident to many consumers that what can be done once can be done again. Similar DRM systems are used by many other popular forms of digital media, including Napster, Valve’s wildly popular Half Life series and a wide range of videos running under Windows Media Player 10.

If we want to avoid Allan’s fate we should all hope that companies like Valve, Microsoft and Major League Baseball remain financially buoyant for as long as possible.

Comments

[George]

That's why iTunes is so right to insist that consumers buy the video outright. Subscription-based services will all eventually lead to deletion (or more accurately, lead to the video's unplayability) of what you thought you had bought.

[Simon B]

"we should all hope that companies like Valve, Microsoft and Major League Baseball remain financially buoyant for as long as possible."
Why even support these companies with such restrictive business model?
DRM services such as channel4's 4oD (which don't even run on my operating system of choice, Linux), let's campaign for fairer systems, while boycotting the DRM sites (itunes, channel4, BBC iplayer)

[ChengZhe W]

At school, teachers often say "Treat others as you want to be treated". In this case, when Coporations are treating consumers like junk, then how can they expect consumers then respect their pleading to respect their copyright?!