Thursday, October 04, 2007

Had enough of drm? Johansson has too

Jesper Johansson has had enough of DRM so he's chucking out his Windows XP Media Center.

"Is it just me, or is DRM of movies and music the poster child for an inappropriate security v. usability tradeoff? How many billions has the industry spent on DRM schemes that the bad guys break in weeks? How many perfectly legitimate users has the industry annoyed and driven away? How many lost DVD sales has it caused? How many lost sales of Microsoft's Media Center software and Windows Vista has it caused because the DRM sub-system randomly decides that you must be a criminal? And, how many bootleggers has it stopped? Based on my last jaunt through a night market somewhere in the Far East the answer to the last question seems pretty clear at least."

Update: His domestic entertainment troubles have made the news.

"It must have been a slow news day today. I can't think of any other reason why the fact that an ex-Microsoft employee is considering installing a Linux box would be news. Imagine the articles if they realized that, right at this very moment, a whole slew of current Microsoft employees are probably using Linux at home. And, imagine the headlines if it got out that a Microsoft employee admired OpenBSD! Oh, no, wait, that already happened."

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