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Happy Holidays – You Dirty Infringers


Entities like Microsoft, Sony and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are trying harder and harder to thwart copyright infringers. Unfortunately, as you can see from the foregoing links, while those efforts may tend to capture a small-time infringer or two, the anti-infringing efforts tend to make life much more difficult for the rest of us. Ironically, from what I can see, the anti-copyright initiatives do very little to thwart the technically savvy who, not surprisingly, tend to engage in much more copyright infringement than the average hip-hop downloading granny.

I realize that granting me the fully paid up, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide license like I get with CDs and DVDs is no longer in vogue. I am all for a little capitalism, but I must appear absolutely covered with fleece. I also had not realized that it must be considered poor etiquette in certain media licensing circles to leave me the least bit bewhiskered. Shearing consumers bald, however, cannot be successful in the long run. While consumers are willing to pay a fair price for entertainment, integrating enjoyment limitations into media and placing monitoring software on customer’s computers will ultimately backfire.

In fact, it already has. I spoke with Santa; he has had enough. Don’t tell my kids, but I have it on good authority that come December 25th Santa will be sliding down the chimney with our family’s first ever Mac.

Brett Trout

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