DRM vs Consumers...

Ah, so it begins. For some time, consumer rights advocates have been concerned about the power that Digital Rights Management (or, as some more accurately call it, Digital Restrictions Management) grants to conent producers over consumers. Now, MLB has apparently decided that it really doesn't care about screwing over customers who bought DRM locked content.

In short, MLB has decided to change the technical details in how they protect any content they sell (in this case, videos of old games you can download and burn to disc). Who cares, right? Well, it turns out that the old DRM they use checks back in to a central server every time you go to play it. And, as part of the change, MLB sorta removed the magic server bits that convinced the player to show you what you paid for. All of those files you downloaded - and paid for! - are now just encrypted noise taking up space on your hard drive.

Oops.

I'd bet that, given the noise that's starting up, and the complete idiocy of what MLB has done, they'll bashfully find some what to at least look like they're making up for it - gift cards for screwed customers towards repurchasing the content (still under DRM, of course), or something equally feeble. A more interesting question is, what lessons will be learned from this on the industry side?

Microsoft Vista is shoving DRM features deeper and deeper into the core OS. Heck, the volume licensing arrangement already includes a component that talks to a server every 30 days, and being out of contact for too long will cripple your computer. The issues with performance, stability, application compatibility, and overall quirkiness have been enough to make resellers revolt and continue selling XP.

In both of these cases, the guys selling stuff have a de facto monopoly. No one but Microsoft gets the final say in what happens with new versions of Windows, and hanging out at your local high school baseball games just isn't the same as watching Don and Remy at Fenway. In the end, they'll be able to push through a lot of this kind of crap, and still come out reasonably well. This doesn't mean it's a good thing to build a business model around pissing off your consumers, however. Apple has had enough pressure that they're even starting to sell music without any DRM, and plenty of people have talked about Radiohead and the unencumbered downloads.

So the question now is, which lesson will the industry learn? That if you have enough momentum to not care about your customers, you can get away with DRM, or that if you offer your customers enough value, you won't need to bother with the expense of DRM in the first place?