[besson3c]

I'm up for a debate about intellectual property, DRM, and copywrite.

As a starting place, check out what Microsoft plans to do with Vista:

http://news.com.com/Hollywood%2C+Mic...&subj=news


Most consumers seem to want consumer friendly products with minimal or no restrictions. I sometimes wonder if some people who jump aboard this bandwagon aren't just 16 year old kids that want to continue to download the latest Britney album off of P2P.

What do you think? What is the balance here? What do you think is the best compromise?

[Millennium]

I am not against the idea of copyright. I'm not even against the idea of using technological means to enforce copyright, as long as they do so in an ethical manner. By this, I mean that the rights of legitimate users must never be infringed in any way, erring on the side of presuming innocence if need be, and that the terms of the copyright must be respected.

I have yet to see any form of modern DRM which does this. I've seen some software antipiracy schemes which do, but these have fallen out of favor in recent years. Truly, it is a sad situation when the creators have forgotten that the users have rights too.

[OreoCookie]

I think the whole piracy discussion gives the creative industry in a false sense of security. Fact 1: every reasonable copyright protection can and will be cracked. Fact 2: there are enough customers out there willing to pay for music and movies.

The industry doesn't question itself and has lived off very high margins (compare the CD prices in different countries, especially a few years ago: why did the Enigma CDs I bought in the States cost 12, 13 bucks and twice as much in Germany in 1997?). They also don't see the games industry on their radar: people's budget for entertainment has to be shared now among several industries: games industry (which is growing), music and movies.

I have the impression the industry tries to stop freak waves by trying to push the water back with its hands. They cannot force me to use a `no-intelligence' CD player instead of my computers optical drive or my parents' `smart' DVD player – why should I be punished for buying a legit copy of my favorite artist's CD when it doesn't work?