The Evils of DRM #174 - Google Kicks Customers in Nuts and Charges Them For It
See this is why DRM is bad for consumers. Google has taken its video store down. No problem, services close every day and not always because the service provider wants to (I speak from experience). The problem isn’t that the service is closing, it is that people who have purchased content will no longer have access to what they bought and paid for thanks to our friend DRM. Over to Arstechnica …
after Google takes its video store down, its Internet-based DRM system will no longer function. This means that customers who have built video collections with Google Video offerings will find that their purchases no longer work. This is one of the major flaws in any DRM system based on secrets and centralized authorities: when these DRM data warehouses shut down, the DRM stops working, and consumers are left with useless junk. Furthermore, Google is not refunding the total cost of the videos. To take advantage of the credit Google is offering, you have to spend more money, and furthermore, you have to spend it with a merchant that supports Google Checkout.
Good old “we are so big we don’t have to care about customers” Google and huzzah for DRM, the hero of evil corporations and bane of honest fee-paying consumers everywhere.
If you like this post subscribe to my feed