My initial answer was one – of course – but then I realized that it is not that easy to answer. One video player is enough to play most videos on my computer, I use SMPlayer for this purpose. But what about all those video portals from tv companies or other companies that rent or distribute videos online ? It is beginning to get a little messy now.
Downloading pirated films is stealing
Did you recently purchase a DVD in store ? If so you must have noticed this wonderful reminder at the beginning that can’t be skipped that downloading pirated films is stealing and a crime. I recently bought 24 season 4 on DVD which comes on seven DVDs and contains all the 24 episodes of this season.
NBC cooperates with Amazon after ditching Apple
NBC wants more control on pricing and usage restrictions while Apple did not want to give in which is why the current relationship between those two is a little bit icy and it remains unclear if NBC shows will still be available in iTunes at years end. Meanwhile Amazon and NBC announced that NBC’s tv shows will be made available on Unbox.
Why WGA and DRM will fail
We had two reports last week that gave us the reason why DRM and WGA will fail in the long run. The first story was about Google Video who sold videos with DRM and closed down their service leaving everyone who purchased those videos standing in the rain because it will not be possible to play those videos after Google Video shuts down.
Why DRM is not consumer friendly
I just read an interesting article at Arstechnica by Ken Fisher who was commenting on the termination of Google’s commercial Video service. The termination takes effect in just two days which would not be a big problem if the users who bought or rented videos from the service would still be able to play their purchased videos after that date.
Anti-DRM T-Shirt Designs
The sites Torrentfreak and Beautiful Crime announced an Anti-DRM T-Shirt competition a while ago and all entries to the competition have been posted on the Torrentfreak website. All 46 T-Shirt designs can be seen and everyone may vote for their favorite T-Shirt design. Who would have thought that this competition would get such a large amount of entrants ?
You can find some really clever designs among the 46 and I would like to display the five designs that I liked the most here at Ghacks. Just head over to the Torrentfreak website to take a look at all of the designs. The winning design will receive a price of $250, the second one of $100 and the third a price of $50.
New Trend: Raise Music Prices by offering DRM Free Music
Now if that is not a clever idea. Force DRM on the users for several years with a pricing scheme straight out of hell and then use a huge publicity machine to make the customers believe that DRM free music is the future raising prices once more. If you thought that everything would be good now that many labels decided to offer drm free music albums as well you could not be more wrong. What is happening now is that the Music Industry once again fools the customers by offering overpriced products.
