During LinuxWorld Boston, last tuesday, a RealNetworks executive - Jeff Ayars, said that either Linux implements DRM capabilities, or it will excluded from the consumer market. According to him, without DRM, people won't be able to reproduce digital content, therefore will have to opt for another operating system. But the Free Software Foundation claimed that consumers do not want digital rights management on their content. Just some weeks ago, a researcher from Cambridge-MIT proved how DRM failed in practice.
Jeff compared Linux to Vista, stating that the last operating system is introducing features such as Protected Media Path, Protected Video Path and Protected User Mode Audio, features that he would like to see on Linux aswell. But it is exactly these "features" that will make Windows XP the operating system of choice for a lot more years then we first imagined.
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"The Sony rootkit case made it quite clear why DRM is not accepted by consumers and why there is no successful business case for DRM," he said in an e-mail. "Apple iTunes allows people to burn their tracks on regular CDs, which can then be re-encoded and file-shared easily -- so is better described as 'digital inconvenience management' only. eMusic.com offers clean audio tracks without any restrictions. No DRM platform comes close to either of these in popularity." "So fortunately, it is up to the consumer to decide what the consumer market wants. And its answer is clear: It does not want DRM!" he said. "The sooner we bury the foolish notion of putting each and every use of a computer under control of the media industry, the sooner we can start looking for real alternatives." - Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe"Linspire has not added DRM into our (distribution) yet but would like to add it if we are given the opportunity, provided it is a DRM that is being used by consumer products (such as Apple's FairPlay or Microsoft's PlaysForSure). If someone comes out with an open-source DRM, we'd be behind it, but we need major content providers to support it as well," Welch said. Novell said it is keen to support more media formats but did not mention support for DRM. "We are looking forward to the time when Linux users will have access to media in all formats. We obviously support open media formats in our offerings now, and we're currently in discussions with vendors who control proprietary formats to include support for them, as well," said Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, Novell's director of Linux product marketing. You can read the full article at ZDNet here. |
Can anyone imagine TiVo on content-protected television signal? Who wants rootkits from Sony on their Linux distribution? When will we see "Microsoft's PlaysForSure" sticks on Linux boxes?
Source: ZDNet
