Content vs. hardware

Ars Technica has a story about the movie industry sueing Samsung over making a DVD player that could be reprogrammed to ignore DVD region codes and high-definition copyright measures. Well, if even Amazon is offering help on how to reprogram your DVD player to make it region code free, it is clear that there is a conflict between the people who want to protect the content, and the people who want to sell hardware.

Digital rights management (DRM) systems are getting more and more sophisticated. But that is not in the consumers best interest. It is perfectly possible for a consumer to have a legally bought HDTV, high-definition DVD player, and high-definition DVD, and still not be able to watch his DVD in high-definition, because for example he bought a HDTV which isn't HDCP compatible.

And for once the hardware producers are on the side of the consumers, against the content providers. It is perfectly possible to design a future DRM system where the content provider dictates that you can watch this DVD only during full moon, on a Tuesday, and even that only if you haven't used the same DVD player to watch a DVD from a rival company recently. But that obviously makes selling DVD players very hard.

Even existing protection schemes, like the region codes, make the life of the hardware producers difficult. The average consumer, having bought a DVD on a holiday trip to another region, will not understand why he should be prevented from watching that DVD at home. Him now being far from the vendor of the DVD, he angrily calls the hardware manufacturer. That is why nearly all DVD players can be made multi-region capable by typing in some code via the remote. And the same will probably happen with HDCP and any other DRM system, because the hardware manufacturer has an interest in his machine being able to show everything, because that is what the end user wants.

Meanwhile the real pirates are laughing, because while DRM systems are highly annoying to the normal users, they don't pose much of a barrier to anyone with the most basic hacking skills. In fact the more restrictive it becomes to buy content legally, the easier it becomes for pirates to sell copies on which the DRM system has been removed.