Wednesday, November 1, 2006
DefectiveByDesign Calls for Amazon DRM Tagging
Posted by Damion Chaplin in "HARDWARE" @ 08:00 PM
"With the holiday shopping season fast approaching now is the time for us to take the action that tells shoppers that there are products that are Defective By Design... Amazon.com, perhaps the largest internet retailer, has a system of "tagging" products on its US site. You can look at a product and add a tag that describes it. We have started tagging items that contain DRM (Blu-Ray players and DVDs, the Zune, the iPod and more) with the "defectivebydesign" tag... Your participation will ensure that thousands of products get tagged and reviewed, and hundreds of thousands of consumers, maybe millions, will be warned about DRM. Nice!"
Say, now here's a cool idea. Actually warn people about the limitations of the product their about to buy! :roll: Do you know that to this day I talk to people about the iPod and most of them are unaware that songs bought on iTunes aren't playable on any other player? I often wonder how many people out there think they've been duped every day when they buy songs using an online service only to have it not work with the hardware they bought. Just yesterday I had to explain to my coworker (she's got a Samsung YP-somethingorother) that she needed to find a service that advertised the "PlaysForSure" logo. People are totally unaware of these things! So I support this move on DefectiveByDesign's part. I encourage you to tag items on Amazon as 'defectivebydesign' and to write reviews describing the limitations a new owner can expect after buying the product they're looking at. It's only fair, after all. But please refrain from bashing the product alone (the iPod and Zune are both great pieces of hardware if you avoid the online part), or Amazon for selling it. Just let them know the limitations of the DRM scheme used. They'll thank you for it.
Say, now here's a cool idea. Actually warn people about the limitations of the product their about to buy! :roll: Do you know that to this day I talk to people about the iPod and most of them are unaware that songs bought on iTunes aren't playable on any other player? I often wonder how many people out there think they've been duped every day when they buy songs using an online service only to have it not work with the hardware they bought. Just yesterday I had to explain to my coworker (she's got a Samsung YP-somethingorother) that she needed to find a service that advertised the "PlaysForSure" logo. People are totally unaware of these things! So I support this move on DefectiveByDesign's part. I encourage you to tag items on Amazon as 'defectivebydesign' and to write reviews describing the limitations a new owner can expect after buying the product they're looking at. It's only fair, after all. But please refrain from bashing the product alone (the iPod and Zune are both great pieces of hardware if you avoid the online part), or Amazon for selling it. Just let them know the limitations of the DRM scheme used. They'll thank you for it.
