ChoJin’s Quarter

Apparently DVD Jon continues to have fun: he reversed the Microsoft NSC file encryption.

Sometimes I have the feeling this is not fair. Through the DeCSS trial, he got a sort of immunity, which allows him to reverse pretty much anything for interoperability. Don’t get me wrong, that’s very good, but anyone should be allowed to do that. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if someone else had reversed it. The odd of getting a lawsuit is probably much higher.

For example, if tomorrow I release a tool to remove Microsoft Windows Media Player’s DRM, so I and others can subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited even though we possess an iPod.Will I get a lawsuit? Unfortunately I think so. Now let’s imagine DVD Jon does it… That’s why I’m saying that’s not fair, but I’m grateful that at least someone can do it.

Let’s talk a little bit about Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Some people are complaining that you are renting the musics if you are using this service, you do not own them. Well, quite frankly, I don’t think I mind. $5/month is probably cheap enough to convince myself to pay this price ad vitam eternam. Yes, although I hardly listen to musics, I would not mind paying $5/month for the peace of mind of being able to listen to pretty much anything when I want where I want. Some people would laugh and say you can just install kazza, emule, bittorrents… but quite frankly I’d rather pay five bucks a month than having to install these softwares, search, wait for them to download… Time is money, and this time is probably worth five bucks.

But this is funny: as I said I hardly listen to any musics, I probably buy one or two CDs a year. Not because I download everything else, I’m too lazy for that. But since I don’t listen to the radio, I don’t know what is good, therefore even if I wanted, I would have no idea what to download… so, I buy one or two CDs a year and I hardly listen to them. Hence, if you do the math, five bucks a month would cost me more. But you know what? I don’t care. To me that’s close enough to justify paying more to have unlimited access even though I’ll probably won’t use it that much.

In France we have the same thing for the theater, 18-20 Eur/month (for 1 year subscription), and you have unlimited access to see movies. If you think about it, that’s 4 movies/month if you want to amortize it. What happens most of the time, is that you go to the theater a lot at the beginning and then you slow down. Up to a point you might start wondering if it is worth it. Well, in my opinion it is. You’re more likely to see independent movies, or movies you would have not seen without the unlimited access. When you go to the theater, you don’t need to wonder if you have enough money in your pocket, or if the movie will be good enough. You don’t really care anymore, if it is really bad, you can just go to see another one. Yes you probably pay more in a year than you used to, but you enjoy it! Damn, I wish we had these unlimited theater things in USA…

So… I’m pissed off at these DRMs, that’s so stupid if you look at it this way: I would like to subscribe to Yahoo! music unlimited but I can’t because I have an iPod. Yes, I would like to pay my musics, but I can’t because of these damn DRM the industry is forcing us to have to “protect” against piracy. Now I can imagine that someone who listen a lot to music will be forced (yes forced!) to download illegally the musics instead of paying for it, just because the DRM is preventing him from using the music legally on his iPod. How the f*ck does it make sense?