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Consumer preference vs. RIAA

16 Mar 2002

Most successful companies are driven by the needs and desires of their customer base. After all, if you produce a product that your customer doesn’t want, how will you survive? The recording industry seems to have forgotten this basic concept of business. In New Architect, Margaret Berry says, "protecting intellectual property has overshadowed user’s needs, and DRM has become an obstacle to customer service." (That’s What I Want, March 2002)

Some of you may remember the lengths that software companies went to in the 80s to prevent piracy. Hardware dongles were required to run many business applications. Several games required users to enter randomly chosen information from the users manual each time you played.

The software industry figured out that these methods didn’t increase their bottom line. In fact, as Tim O'Reilly points out, consumers avoided purchasing products with complex protection schemes.

Anon Emus
December 12, 2006 10:37 AM

Yeah, I remember:

“Please type the fourth word on page 27 here:”

People just photocopied the manuals and gave them out with the software.


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