HD disk format wars are ***spam*** [TheInquirer]

[Saint-Chinian, parti]

Un excellent article à lire en ligne (en Anglais), sur le site de The Inquirer, qui fait le point et dresse le bilan fin 2006, de la guerre des formats et de l'inefficacité des DRM, c'est ici :
HD disk format wars are ***spam***

HD disk format wars are ***spam***
Opinion A clear victor emerges
By: Charlie Demerjian Tuesday 26 December 2006, 01:22

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).

Yes, in a year where Sony rootkitted it's customers, lied to my face about their actions (hi John, still have your number, kisses), and fell flat with anything related to Blu-Ray, things couldn't get worse right? Well, the other camp, HD-DVD is only slightly less nasty, but still unacceptable. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they both failed in the market.

MS and the media companies sold you out hoping to reap more and more profits. Let me just say I held out no hope that they would behave in anything less than a socially irresponsible fashion, but the depths of their depravity did end up shocking me.
.../...
Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They ***spam*** in spite of the features they tout, not because of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers, what a laugh riot.

In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone who pulls out a ***spam***. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it whistling down, operators are standing by.

In the mean time, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes.
If you take 10 minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on P2P networks. I haven't bothered to get one, so I can't comment on the quality, but it sure looks like availability is there. What was an underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1% market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer than the legit versions.

The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses are a lost cause. (Funny how he wasn't sued though, kind of makes you wonder...) As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels. Piracy, the better choice (tm).

If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-Ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their pirated CDs in though.

On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save the $1000 on the Blu-Ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is quite on-demand. You don't need to sign up, give them your details to be sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for (not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).

On the down side, the RIAA/MPAA/PATSY/TOOLBOY have sued probably 10,000 people now, and each 'settlement' is, well lets just use $5000 for the sake of round numbers. Now, the conservative estimates of P2P usage was around 30 million people, but I am pretty damn sure that is far lower than the actual usage. Last time I saw anything serious, it was 35M and growing fast. Lets just assume that it is now 50M users.

10,000 * $5,000 = $50,000,000. The net cost to each P2P user, assuming everyone out there settles is $1. To look at it another way, if you look at it in the worst case light, you have a 1 in 5000 chance of getting nailed. A lot of people buy lottery tickets with far far worse odds than that, and spend more than $5000 doing so every few years. To be even more cynical, hands up everyone who personally knows someone who got sued by the RIAA. Now, hands up everyone who knows someone who downloaded music or movies. Any guesses which one is bigger? Piracy, the better choice (tm).

What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled, legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory from the jaws of evil.
Piracy, the better choice(tm).