I agree with everything you wrote. People don’t mind paying for content as long as it convenience and the price is right.
However, Apple will never get rid of their DRM for iTunes unless forced by the government. Too much money is at stake. Apple makes money from the downloads as well as the hardware. No big deal. But if you want to play the media (talking about video here) that you purchased on something other than a computer, you’re going to have to buy an Apple product to play it on like an iPod. Unless you’re streaming the media from your computer to whatever playback device you want. Not convenience.
For music, this wasn’t a big deal. You could burn a CD, play it where ever you wanted.
Video that you download from Apple cannot be burned to a DVD.
So all the music and movies I download through the iTunes, that I would like to watch on my entertainment center, is worthless unless I buy another Apple product. I don’t like this. I like Apple but I should never be forced into buying an expensive device if I don’t want to.
The plan I offered in the OP is based on the iTunes business model but without relying on an Apple product to playback your media.
You could download a film online and play it back on any machine that you authorize. You can still buy a physical DVD and play it back on any DVD player.
You would be allowed rights to rip the media to a few devices that you authorize.
You should have the option to buy more rights for a small cost.
You should not be forced into buying rights if you don’t want them.
The reason I started this thread was because I just bought a DVD that I cannot rip in. The video rips fine but without any audio. (This is the Tick animated series that came out a few months ago). I just want to be able to rip in onto my laptop so I can watch it at work during my lunch break. The show isn’t available through iTunes. Even if it was, I would be paying double to have the show on both a physical DVD and as a file. So now I’m stuck with a DVD that I love to watch. And I can as long as I have the DVD with me.
Screw convenience. Screw me because, God forbid, I’d actually like to use the content that I purchased for something legal.
My plan isn’t perfect but at least I could rip my DVD once without being treated like a criminal.
I know they probably will not remove it and this is exactly why I will probably never use iTunes to purchase music. The portable media player market and the media player/jukebox software is developing too fast and with too many new and appealing products for me to see any value in investing in a media library that essentially restricts me to using one brand of player and one brand of device.
Honestly I think Apple is less concerned with DRM than they are chaining consumers to the iPod brand. So long as avid music lovers have hundreds, maybe thousands, of music files playable only in iTunes it’s unlikely that any will be shifting to Zune or Rio brands of portables.
When companies are using the guise of anti-piracy to essentially promote crippleware I have a problem.
DRM is a joke. If I buy something, I ought to own it. If I buy a DVD, I should be able to rip it to my computer, make clips from it, take screeshots for my wallpaper, use clips in a presentation, map the actors faces to my online gaming avatar, put scenes into my my home movie, etc. The tighter grip they try to put on the consumer, the more they will slip out of their grasp. And don’t get me started on hardware that the manufacturer can retroactively disable features on! By opening up what you can do with the product, you make it more valuable for the consumer and it actually ends up costing the manufacturer less by not having to spend money on complicated DRM schemes and lawsuits over software that corrupts your computer. And the lawsuits going after downloaders? The money is going to the executives, not the artists.
Ultimately DRM is pointless. Hackers will always be able to defeat protections and make things available for free. And people who want to take this shortcut will always be able to. But most people will be willing to pay a reasonable price for a product of good quality because it is better quality and because they understand that the people who made it deserve compensation.
So as for the OP, yes that’s definitely better than the current system, and may be as good as we can get the big wigs to agree to. But it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.
Well, ripping DVDs is technically illegal anyway, thanks to the DMCA. As long as you’re not concerned about that, why not just download the episodes from a torrent site? You’ve already paid for them, right?
(Or find some updated DVD ripping software that can handle these discs. New copy protection schemes are cracked just as quickly as they come out.)
The trouble occurs for people who want to have control over their own equipment and purchases.
The only reason that CSS (the DVD Content Scrambling System) was cracked was that no Linux DVD Decoder was released (with no prospect of one forthcoming). And Linux (and other FOSS developers) will continue to attack and demolish restrictive technologies, in the name of software freedom and fair use.
Eventually though, hardware drivers will be the biggest problem, as manufacturers refuse to release code and specs that allow free software drivers. This problem will get worse as devices (like graphics cards and BlueRay/HD readers) get more complex.
The future is not bright for fair and reasonable use of purchased media.