Hello World

Here’s an example of how digital media and hardware sellers have dropped the ball:

A couple of months ago I made an ill-advised bid on a set of DVDs for a television show that I enjoyed a lot in my youth. But I’m a busy guy and haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch all 90-some episodes. Or any of them, for that matter. You know what would be great? If I could put the DVD in my computer, rip the episodes to little iPod screen-size video files, and load them up to watch on my commute. But–surprise!–I cannot do that. It’s illegal to decrypt DVDs, and even if I were willing to break the law it’s an extremely complicated and arcane process; and then I’d have to figure out how to get the file into a format that would work on my iPod. Suffice it to say that I gave up on this plan and anticipate putting off watching Optimus Prime battle the Decepticons until some years into my retirement.^*

Now this situation is dumb for any number of reasons, the largest one being that if they just made this process a) legal and b) simple it would significantly increase the value of their products. I’d pay 20% more for a DVD or music file if I knew that I could archive it in an unencrypted format and that I could transfer it to any piece of hardware that could play it. But I can’t, and it drives me crazy! That’s actually a significant problem that can’t be quantified so simply: how much money are these companies losing due to pissing off their customers? To be honest, it’s probably not much–most people I know are quite content buying songs and TV shows from iTunes and putting them on their iPods. But for me, there’s not much appeal to the idea of paying more money for a season of TV shows on iTunes than I would on DVD, and getting a set of lower resolution encrypted files that won’t play unless I use Apple hardware and software. And, more importantly, if I could just put television show DVDs on my iPod I would buy a lot more of them–and when my iPod breaks the day after its warranty expires I’d be a lot more likely to buy a new one. That seems like a win-win situation to me.

And Apple is actually the BEST purveyor of these goods–everyone else’s offering is more restrictive (and none of that will play on iPods at all). It’s a disturbing situation in which decisions are made based not on what the consumer wants but instead on what the producer wants. That doesn’t make sense at all, but as long as the consumer doesn’t realize how thoroughly and unnecessarily the producer is screwing up the process I guess it’s never going to change.

^* Why didn’t they make DVDs as easy to use as CDs? Because they wanted to make more money off of them, and by restricting the ways in which we can use them they preserve additional channels of profit (like selling the files on iTunes in a low-resolution format that looks terrible on big screens, ensuring that dedicated fans will buy shows twice). And digital rights management ensures that the next generation of media will be even more difficult to use in ways that we’ve grown accustomed to–making copies, sharing with friends and family, even editing for our own uses. Unless something big happens soon, those days are over–we’ve surrendered our right to media ownership for the superficial convenience of what is essentially a complicated long-term media rental. (What happens when a new format comes out? Think Apple’s going to transfer all of your music files for free? Even the ones you bought on CD and ripped yourself–and lost the CDs somewhere along the way? Don’t count on it.)