Silverlight swallows off-line DRM pill The next version of Microsoft's Silverlight will cozy up to media giants with out-of-browser digital rights management (DRM). Microsoft said Tuesday it will provide a preview demonstration Silverlight 4.0 this weekend that will feature DRM for content delivered offline and that is powered by its PlayReady technology. The …
Well, this time MS may be doing the consumer a real service. If the term "multicast" used in the article does indeed mean the employment of the IETF standard service "IP Multicast" then this new Silverlight distribution will force most ISP's to discontinue their practice of blocking one of
the most useful services that the internet has to offer !
Having just had to scour the torrent sites to replace a couple of pdf-based ebooks for a friend due to not being able to unlock them after a PC rebuild I'm pretty sure Ill steer clear of any DRM'd content.
It was my first experience with DRM, as (DVDs aside I suppose) I've avoided it. Having been bitten I'll be even more assiduous in my rejection of it.
I don't think you all are thinking of the future Microsoft Vending Machine Corporation. You connect it directly to your bank account. From then on, you can sail the web, play any content you like, buy merchandise, etc., and all safe with the knowledge you have properly anted up....at least as long as your bank account is in the black.
Why exactly should anyone use SIlverlight?
What I mean is this:
1, I've never encountered a site which uses any version of it.
2, The stuff they are touting as being great seems a little lame.
3, It's now got DRM imbedded
4, It's by MS
AC wrote: "It was my first experience with DRM, as (DVDs aside I suppose) I've avoided it."
Yeah and no-one knows how to copy DVDs, do they? DRM seems a pointless waste of time. It stamps all over your rights and leaves you with little except a nasty taste in your mouth.
DVDs always make me laugh. The original disc always starts with how, when, where and why you're not allowed to play the disc along with a message saying that copying it is naughty. DVD copying software filters these disclaimers out (for obvious reasons) which makes the disc start more quickly and you can be watching the DVD with less time wasted.
I'll bet the princely sum or 2p that any DRM in Silverlight will be it's death knell. Either someone will crack the DRM or everyone will stop using it and just watch/download illegal copies of movies instead.
(Why isn't there an icon of someone shooting themselves in the foot?)
The company said in a statement the feature would: "Enable movie studios and retailers to provide the same rich interactive experiences via digital copy and Internet distribution as consumers get with DVD or Blu-ray."
Should have been….
The company said in a statement the feature would: "Enable movie studios and retailers to continue to make inflated super-normal profits from the control of a monopoly of the digital copy and Internet distribution as have with get with DVD or Blu-ray."
Another piece of shit to be avoided at all costs. I recently installed a litigate copy of a driving theory test (version 4, got to keep churning the product) on my son's PC (€22), for my efforts I got Windoze media player 11 and "Microsoft Genuine Disadvantage" installed on the PC. I've already moved to OpenOffice, and the more of this crap I have to put up with, the more I am inclined to install Linux as well.
FAIL, MASSIVE FAIL.
It's a clever move. Yeah sure Microsoft=Evil, big whoop. Who cares? Nonetheless, it's a clever move.
Well, it's not very clever as Humans are trivially simple to fool. Just dangle something shiney and it gets embarrassing to watch.
My question is - who decides what high-value content is? Studios? Why do I need to feel like "OMFG the studio just released an extra scene with (appropriate whore's name) burping. OMG it was awesome!" matters to me? It doesn't. WHo says that I must respect anything they decide is of value to try to hawk to me? lol.
Nobody.
If you're so stupid as to swallow what they feed you then by all means, be the vegetable that you are. If, on the other hand, you're one of those pinko-commie-hippy-bastards, you know - the kind of person that likely can walk and chew gum concurrently - then you're already deciding what's of value to you.
Likely some video snippet of WHOMEVER farting on camera or crotchless in an SUV is something you can do without. Not that (appropriate teen whore)'s crotch isn't simply fascinating....
Microsoft is doing something the smart way - developing a revenue stream -- enticing the makers of said stream - controlling the revenue stream's delivery and management to the world. Likely it's unable to do this without leveraging its monopoly in the market. You know the one...
Of course, it's only able to do this because you place such a high value on the next Disney whore's bare crotch.
Either way you win, though - because you get to see it and pay for it. WOOHOO!!!!! When they let you, of course.
Is there an avatar out there for the utter contempt I feel towards all the retards out there screwing everything up for the rest of us?
This post has been deleted by its author
Wind your necks back in, penguin fanbois. Microsoft aren't doing DRM, they're just supporting the streaming of DRM content. As for whether that's a problem for Moonlight, that depends on whether the GPL allows for open-source software to be created which supports the streaming of DRM'd data. Somehow, I doubt that's a problem so normal service is resumed and Microsoft are no more evil than they were yesterday.
Unless, of course, you also think Apache is evil because it allows the streaming of those pay-per-view movies you watch when the kids are asleep.
To the couple of guys above who suggested that you can, you really need to consider how such DRM systems work.
The player receives the content, the player phones home to confirm that the content is "authorised" and then the player performs the playback. If the content is not authorised then the player refuses to play the content.
Sure, they could put that into mono, but being open source there is nothing to stop anybody else from taking the source, cutting out the middle DRM part and just making a player that plays all content irrespective of the DRM status.
The only way to avoid that is by changing moonlight to closed source and only release it as binary code.
And if DRM means not only phoning home but getting the decryption key it can't be cut out that easily. I'm sure there are plenty of intelligent coders on DRM software (somewhere - just not at Sony etc) so this has probably been thought through before implementing it. Surely. Must've been... No?
Penguin for no reason at all. None. Nope.
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