*Transcendental *Logic

So, the corporate retail world has decided to declare today a holiday: Cyber Monday, whose tagline is apparently “Because you haven’t been on a spending binge since last Friday”.

Okay, what the heck, let’s do a Cyber Monday post, and let’s somehow manage to stay away from the obviously blue connotations of such a phrase. (And questions like, “Does this mean I get to Cyber at work?”)

Instead, let’s hear two really cool items in technology news this week, items which are cool enough separately but just frigging awesome together. (The PB & J of tech info, you might say.)

First, this review in the Sun-Times of the Zune (Microsoft’s attempt to make a better-than-iPod mp3 player) is absolutely hilarious. Highly recommended for anyone who needs a good, vengeful belly-laugh today. (”The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure.” Wow!) However, even if you don’t need that laugh, you should look at the factual parts of the article before you make any hasty purchasing decisions. Such as:

* The software you MUST use to make the thing work has errors that may necessitate calling “that technical member of your family” over to make it work

* The software (mandatory, remember) is incompatible with Windows Media Player (?!) and doesn’t support podcasts, either.

* Even Microsoft’s own “Plays-for-Sure” music format is incompatible with the Zune. Basically your only choice is to buy all-new music from the Zune Store, which, rather than taking money, makes you buy “points” in chunks of five dollars. The songs are still roughly a dollar each, but it’s almost certain that MS is aiming to institute the “variable pricing” scheme (i.e. popular songs cost more) that Apple has refused to do with iTunes.

* The music-distribution industry (RIAA) is getting a kickback from every Zune player sold. (Personally, that alone did it for me!)

* The Zune has WI-FI, which sounds cool except that it won’t connect with anything besides another Zune. Not your computer, not nothing.

* Any DRM-free songs that you send to a Zune will become “infected” with Microsoft’s DRM. Guess what? They’ll go from being the mp3s (or whatever) that you know and love to ghost-files that disable themselves after “3 days or 3 plays, whichever comes first”. After they disable themselves, they become links to buy the song from the Zune Store.

Gah, that’s almost too much evil to handle. It’s definitely too much evil to pay hundreds of dollars for!

The other newsworthy item is about the same evil, but it’s a bit happier in tone. It’s from Learn Out Loud, a really cool company trafficking in educational audiobooks, podcasts and the like. (If you don’t like them yet, check this out: They’re giving away an audiobook of The Art of War this month!) …And in addition to their general coolness, they wrote an excellent piece on the Top Ten Arguments Against DRM. Very nice and concise, but guess what? Not so concise that I can’t summarize it. ;)

DRM (”Digital Rights Management”) does not prevent the illegal use of files!
- All it does it make things a little harder for both legal and illegal users. (Sometimes only for the legal users, actually.)
- DRM is stupid-easy to crack. All it takes is one person breaking it, and then all the files that use it are open. Not exactly the rock-hard preventative measure the fatcats make it out to be. Most DRM schemes are broken in a few weeks from the time they come out.
- Most CDs are unprotected, so there’s a non-DRM copy of the song out there anyway. So what’s the point of DRM-ing the one that’s being legally downloaded?

DRM makes producing content a LOT more expensive.
- Direct costs of development are basically passed on to consumers (this is why Apple’s iTunes songs cost ninety-nine cents, but eMusic’s un-DRM’d songs only cost a quarter)
- Large hidden costs exist too, in the form of how many people won’t buy content because it’s DRM’d. Contrary to the recording-industry line, drops in sales hurt artists and stores worse than it hurts them (for more info, read “A Musician’s Take”).

DRM keeps content from working for legal users.
- Equipment is going to evolve, period! Do you want to re-purchase your entire media library every time you upgrade?
- DRM fundamentally changes who is in control of the media products you buy. The existence of DRM means that the company distributing the content (*not* the artists making it!) are keeping their hands on the media you buy, retaining the ability to tell you what you can and can’t do with it. They’d love for you to believe that this is their right, but everything in American law and history says the opposite.
- (I added this one) Also, the existence of DRM makes content much more likely to be incompatible with different computers, operating systems and players. DRM often “breaks” content or computer systems, and has been known to be susceptible to viruses, trojans, etc.

So. To rehash: The Zune is a shining obelisk of suck. Buying DRM-encrypted content is basically the same as handing over money for the pleasure of saying you own something that you can’t control and will eventually have to buy again. And no, you can’t Cyber at work. ;)

And that’s Cyber Monday, from my port to yours.  I suppose you can go buy something now if you want to.
-PD

This entry was posted 2 years ago on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 12:18 pm and is filed under consumer warfare, technical-ity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.