Major League Baseball recently completed switching DRM providers, a move which resulted fans losing all content they had previously purchased online.
After the MLB finished migrating its content to Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform, all servers supporting the old system were shut down, effectively locking out anyone who had previously purchased videos of MLB games.
Digital Rights Management technology, or DRM, is designed to protect copyright by preventing those who purchase media content from distributing illegal copies. The MLB’s old DRM system required a video to authenticate with their servers before it would allow itself to play. Since the MLB has shut down those servers and moved on to a new scheme,authentic, legally purchased content protected by that DRM cannot contact the MLB to authenticate itself, and has therefore been rendered useless.
Weblog Boing Boing is carrying the story of baseball author Allan Wood, who complained to MLB customer service over his $280 worth of legally purchased videos that refused to play, and was basically told “tough luck”. Major League Baseball refuses to support content purchased from their old system, and does not have plans to issue refunds.
In one fell swoop, Major League Baseball’s major league assholes have given us a crystal clear example of why DRM does not work. There mere fact that content producers do not feel their customers have a right to the products they purchase is apalling. Imagine the reaction if Sony sent representatives out to confiscate cassette tapes after they made the decision to use compact discs — why should online content be any different? I fully believe that the MLB’s actions in this case constitute theft.
DRM and the companies who use it simply cannot be trusted. If at all possible, you should never buy content that is protected by DRM. Despite the fact that I am a devoted music fan, I never purchased a single song for myself online until the announcement of Amazon.com’s DRM-free online music store. Readers are urged to do the same with audio, video, and any other content that is crippled by Digital Rights Management.
More coverage on this story can be found at Boing Boing, Mashable, Geek News Central, and Techmeme.
