[FC-discuss] a DRM idea

[Ben Miller-Jacobson]

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I like it. This would probably work in many cases. Unfortunately,
however, if this is overused it looses it's effect. Consider, for
example, what would happen if we rated every HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie
poorly because of the DRM inherent in those standards. I predict that it
would simply lead to rating deflation long term because it applies to
literally everything in the category. On the other hand, if we
concentrate on the worst offenders or pick a smaller number of
individual targets (perhaps targeting one company at a time, for
example), this could be a powerful tool.

Ben Miller-Jacobson

Nicholas Reville wrote:
> Hey hey everyone,
> 
> Just jumping on this list with an idea that I'm not really in a  
> position to work on right now, but want to throw out there.  With  
> Apple's removal of DRM on (more of? all?) it's music, I think there's  
> a very real risk that people will assume the DRM issue is dead.  For  
> example, there's a feeling that because movies (dvds, blu-ray) and  
> games have long come with some DRM on them, it's a non-issue for those  
> formats.  That mentality could bring our great progress to a halt.
> 
> The other day, I was commenting on a DRM post by Cory on boingboing  
> and I thought about what seems to be have been the most effective anti- 
> DRM action since the rootkit stuff, which was people rating Spore with  
> 1-star on Amazon.  This strikes me as a tactic that can make a major  
> financial impact on companies that use DRM and is very easy to do for  
> folks that want to avoid DRM products and let others know to avoid  
> them.  It could be *extremely* powerful if applied to a large number  
> of products.  Imagine an executive trying to decide whether a DRM  
> system is worth the 3 point drop in star ratings that he'll get if he  
> deploys it.
> 
> One way to approach this would be to have a blog (defective by  
> design?) that posts a new product each week that overuses DRM and asks  
> people to rate it on Amazon.  That would be a great place to start--  
> even on a less well known blog, we can all subscribe to the RSS feed  
> and act on new posts.
> 
>   But an even stronger approach would be to write a Firefox extension  
> that checks pages at Amazon and other sites against a database that  
> says whether something uses DRM or not.  The extension is basically  
> invisible until you come to a page that is selling a DRM-laden  
> product, at which point it pops up and says-- "Hey, this product uses  
> DRM, restricting what you can do after you buy it.  We recommend that  
> you avoid it and that you consider rating the product."  If you can  
> get someone to install the extension once, they'll probably act on it  
> a whole bunch of times in the future.  It could quickly create a huge  
> disincentive for any company to put DRM on a product.
> 
> So I don't know if other folks have suggested this before, but I  
> wanted to get it out of my brain and towards people that might want to  
> take a project like that on.
> 
> Thanks for fighting this fight everyone,
> 
> nicholas
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