Charles on… anything that comes along

Gary ran into an interesting problem with the DVD that the ultrasound person gave them from his wife’s 20-week pregnancy ultrasound scan. (Yes, a DVD. When we went for an ultrasound, we got a grainy photo. They went private. This is what you get for going private.)

So we came home, watched the DVD about 100 times, and then decided to make a backup of it. And we figured our respective mothers would appreciate a copy too. So I stuck the DVD into my DVD recorder, hit One Button Copy - a brilliant invention, I reckon; it copies the disc to the hard disk and then wallops it on to a blank DVD - and nothing happened.

Hello, DRM!

It wasn’t deliberate DRM, but it was DRM nonetheless. Because the doctor used a Sony DVD recorder, and Sony’s a big fan of DRM, the disc he burned was copy protected automatically. Which means that if you have mainstream copying hardware or software it can’t be backed up, and it can’t be copied.

I like the idea of accidental DRM, but it’s all the same in effect: you can’t make backups of things that you own. Which tends to lead one on a search around the net for something that *will* let you back that up and make copies (to send to your parents, who’ll put it in to their DVD and say ‘aww, he’s got his mother’s.. placenta right in the way of the picture).

Point being that you make pirates out of people who would otherwise be entirely happy. By building this stuff into the machines, you make people fight it. What consumer ever chose DRM?

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Shout at your rattle and yowl: deaf babies aren't quiet babies (2 July 2005; score: 40.6%)
• "Miracle babies" - another religion-based scam (14 November 2004; score: 33.3%)
• Neenaw: "999, which blogger do you require?" (18 June 2006; score: 22.57%)