Huzzah for the news that Sony has ended its resistance to selling its music catalog online without digital rights management software.
But now with all the major music studios agreeing to sell their songs DRM-free, what justification do the movie studios have for not doing the same?
And there’s a lot of overlap between the music and movie studios (for example, Sony).
I can’t wait for the day when movies are DRM-free. You could easily buy a DVD, copy it to a mammoth hard drive plugged into your television, and never worry about a scratched disk again.
Or, you could, with the press of a button, transfer any DVD to any portable movie player without worrying about whether your DRM decryption and ripping software will give you a corrupted file.
Will there be movie piracy? Yes, but probably no more than there is now, since determined bootleggers can already pry apart most DRM schemes.
But legitimate customers won’t be hampered anymore by restrictive anti-piracy software, and the movie companies and retailers will earn a huge amount of goodwill from the viewing public.
Not to mention, DRM-free movies could enable a whole cottage industry of companies helping you do cool things with your videos, just like the entire MP3/portable music player industry was born of the ability to easily and legitimately rip music off CDs (okay, Napster played a role, too).
DRM’s days are numbered.
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