In addition to being a game reviewer, I also enjoy watching movies and listening to music online. However, there are some individuals out there who are trying to curtail my rights as a listener. Of course we had to deal with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who has been working nonstop to stop the spread of illegal MP3 downloads.
They have even gone as far as curtailing modern technology, such as XM's Inno/Helix and SIRIUS' Stiletto portable radios. Anyone who doesn't follow RIAA's strict guidelines, or offer to pay very expensive royalties for their music, is hit with a lawsuit.
It's not just music that was affected. Anyone remember DIVX? No, not the video codec that is used on PCs today, but rather the subscription form of DVDs that Circuit City included in all of their DVD players? Basically when you get a DIVX disc you only have a limited number of viewings (called Silver mode,) and to make the disc available for additional viewings, you must either pay another subscription charge, or a larger fee to make the disc Gold, or permanently accessible.
Even worse, it could ONLY be played on the DIVX DVD player that it was bought for. To play it on another player, you had to pay for the subscription again, as the players were connected by a land based phone line.
Apparently the same situation is happening to subscribers of Xbox Live Marketplace. Earlier this week, I received the following email from a Live subscriber named DeadOneWalking. Sounds like he got the bad end of the stick as far as DRM.
"So, on September 30th 2006 I was at a friends place. I bring my HDD over there instead of my whole 360 simply because it;s a lot easier. I decided to buy 3 things on the MP over there, knowing that I was going to be restricted to using it at his place, or I needed to be on Xbox Live. The content is the Kameo Power Pack, Fright Warrior Pack, and the Masquerade Pack. I played Kameo using the content happily that night. When I went home on the 1st I put my HDD in, and connected to Live. When I put in Kameo, I went to play the Expert version, only to be told that I need to buy it.
Well, I made sure I was connected to Live, and sure enough I was. So, I called support on Monday (The 2ed) because it was about 11 PM when I got home. They had me verify that it was downloaded on the HDD and in the download matrix (downloaded items list).
Well, sure enough things appeared fine. So they had me delete and re-download the content. With no luck, I was told the issue would be escalated and would be called tomorrow. I also got a case number. Well, no call so I called them at 6. There was no issue marked on my phone number or gamertag at all as well as no case with my number.
So, I re-explained the issue, and I was told that I needed to format my HDD. Great, I have no MU, and there is a lot of game data I don't want to loose. So I asked for a case number and said I would call back when I got a MU and formatted the drive. So, in a few days I got a MU and backed up the data, did the format (unhappily), and recovered my gamertag. (I was told my tag needed to be recovered through Live for it to work properly) Well, I copied all my stuff back from the MU, and re-downloaded all the stuff I had before. After a few hours, (I have a lot of things from Live) I went ahead and tried Kameo. Still, I had NO access to the power pack or skin packs!
I called them back again, and they actually had my case number. I explained myself AGAIN and the person I had that time was shocked to hear I was told to format the drive. He said it was a licensing issue. (I already knew that, but that didn't help earlier) So, he transferred me to his supervisor. The supervisor said he would escalate that, as well as put add me to get a code to re-download Hexic HD. I was told to wait a fiew days, so I did. So on the 6th, I got a call back about Hexic HD, and got that downloaded. I asked about the points, and was told that I needed to wait longer.
Well, 3 days later, I called back to check on the issue, and I was told it was being looked into and to wait because getting a proper code can be time consuming, but that I would be getting a code for the 800 points. Most of the time, I was forced to go through XBox Live tests over and over again. So, I started calling every other day for a week, and then once a week. Finally, September 2ed, I called them up, and was informed that I was not going to be issued points because my system was not exchanged. So, I immediately asked to talk to a supervisor, and he said the same thing. At this point, I filled a complaint (which I wonder if it was actually put in) and was told that he would re-escalate the issue because of it's "uniqueness."
I was also told that I should receive a call back from them. I told them I won't hold my breath. Later on, I use the "dummy" account I made and purchased 1000 MS points over Live and downloaded the content myself. Sure enough, it worked just fine after a month of basically being lied to."
I will admit too that I had my own share of problems with Xbox Live Marketplace. Last November, Microsoft started up their video on demand service via XBLA, and while most of it has worked out great, there was one time when I tried to download a classic episode of Star Trek (Space Seed,) and received the wrong episode (This Side of Paradise) instead. I ended up calling Xbox Customer Support over the deal, explained my issue, and lucky for me not only did I get the Space Seed episode for free (with no expiration as is typical for their TV shows,) I was also refunded the Microsoft Points that were spent on This Side of Paradise. If it was for a movie, I am sure I would have been screwed over because movies are rendered unavailable after 14 days of download or 24 hours of viewing without spending more points on them.
So what is all of this leading up to? It's the result of an evil technology called Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short. Basically DRM is denying customers who have purchased content from playing them on other systems, like the case of DIVX or DeadOneWalking's 360 HD. Already there are many critics of the technology including myself. One of the strongest critics is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF,) who like myself, believe that what is purchased with my money should be protected under "fair use" laws, the same laws that were offered during the Betamax case (Sony Corp. of America vs. Universal City Studios.) The only difference this time applies to the type of content. Where the Betamax case specialized in analog content, which degrades in quality with each copy, DRM deals with digital copying which is always perfect from copy to copy.
But still in the end, what DRM is doing does interfere with "fair use" policies. What would happen if I have a download an episode of Battlestar Galactica from iTunes to my desktop PC, and then want to take it to watch on my Pocket PC? I'd have to purchase the show again? Why should I have to buy two copies of a program if it's for my "fair use?" In the end, DRM is just another means for the greedy music and entertainment industries to get our hard earned money.
My recommendations is to check the EFF's sites, such as www.eff.org, www.boycott-riaa.com, and www.ihatedrm.com. Let the RIAA and others know how you feel about DRM, and demand your freedoms be heard!
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to listen to some 80s music I recorded onto my Stiletto.
CURRENTLY PLAYING: LOST PLANET: EXTREME CONDITION (XBOX 360)
WAITING FOR: ARMY OF TWO (XBOX 360,) ASSASSINS CREED (XBOX 360)