Is DRM free really that much of an issue any more? It's an inconvenient, but not insurmountable problem for consumers. I think coders have solved for this issue, no?
My biggest concern is not now, but the future. With anything I "own", I should have a high degree of certainty that there's no dependency on any external service for it to remain useful - and I don't have this on DRMed content. If their authentication servers go offline, my movies should still be playable.
This was demonstrated oh-so-nicely by the ironically named PlaysForSure DRM scheme.
I don't give a damn about rental content having DRM[1] since I can't even pretend to own it, but what's bought to own needs to work. It needs to work today, it needs to work next week, and it needs to work in ten years. If I lose the file that's on me (just as if I lost the physical disk), but someone taking a server offline can't prevent me from using my media.
When that changes, I'll start buying content again. Last time I bought a movie was in 2005, and that was on DVD. I started buying music again when iTunes went DRM-free, and I'll happily do the same for movies too. Likewise on video games - anything with serious DRM (SecuROM, for example) will get no money from me.
[1] Assuming it works fine during the rental period, of course.
When you say, "coders have solved for this issue", what do you mean?
Do you mean that the movie industry's coders have made DRM so un-intrusive that it's no longer an issue for consumers? Many would disagree with you there.
Do you mean that "pirate" coders have been able to circumvent all existing DRM techniques, so consumers can always get DRM-free movies if they seek them out? That may be true, but it's a continuing arms race with the movie industry, so it's not an ideal solution.
So, are you saying i can buy this movie online, put it on my NAS and play it on my: media player, Linux laptop and transfer it to my iPad or Android Phone for travels?
That's just a dealbreaker, and i'm sure not only for me. As long as the movie industry doesn't see that, they can complain about piracy all they want, but they won't win me as a customer. Not because i don't want to, but because i just can't watch their fuing movies on my devices.
By the way, i have a slow internet connection, so all streaming platforms are a no go as well. I'd go for streaming but then again the ones i have seen (in germany) rely on MS Silverlight or some creepy stuff that also doesn't work on my media player or laptop.
Edit:
A good example is, that i actually have a Spotify Premium Subscription i am glad to pay (it runs on Linux, media player, iPad, Android, that's just awesome!). I also bought a lot of MP3s on Amazon and i know i will be able to listen to them whenever and whereever i want even without internet access. That's what i pay for.
Just last night I rented a movie on iTunes and I couldn't play it. This was on a recent MacBook connected to my receiver and then TV via HDMI. After rebooting the computer and fighting it quite a bit, I found that it would play if I unplugged the HDMI cable. Now I have previously had glitches where iTunes popped up an error saying my playback device was not allowed, but I solved those by unplugging and trying again. This time it was just stuck. Then I plugged the HDMI cable into the TV instead, and used optical audio from there to the receiver. This "worked," but robbed me of true 5.1 sound.
All of these technologies ought to just work. But they are over-complicated and often break down even for obvious scenarios like "I want to pay to watch a movie with surround sound."
I'm pretty sure DRM was somehow to blame last night, because other videos played fine. I don't know why some iTunes downloads are worse than others but I feel like I never have problems with the SD versions.
Yeah, big time. I just installed Plex, and now I can stream all of my content, except the DRM-crippled stuff, to all of my devices. I'll never move files back and forth again, much less deal with moving license metadata. That means never buying any DRM content again. It's insurmountable.
Depends on the ability to transfer the media to another means of consuming it. Coders may have solved this issue for some but there are still the legal issues to deal with. Most often defeating DRM for the purposes of copying, even for personal use, is illegal in the US.
