Criminal Customers

The recording, television, and motion picture industries are treating their customer base as if they were criminals. The copy protection placed on CDs and DVDs prevent consumers from using the music or movies they have purchased.

Someone that purchases a CD should be allowed to play it on a computer’s CD player or copy a song or two to a disc of their favorite songs. DVD owners should be able to watch movies on their Linux laptops. TV fans should be allowed to record their favorite shows onto any device they see fit.

These are legitimate uses for copyrighted material that is already owned by a consumer. But the respective industries have tried to prevent their customer bases from doing these things.

Music publishers place copy protection on CDs to keep me from copying the music or playing the CD on a device that has the potential to copying music.

Movie publishers encrypt the contents of a DVD and then take the makers of open source DVD software for Linux to court because, to allow playback, the software unscrambles the DVD’s contents. Once the movie is unscrambled, it would be possible to make a copy of it.

Television companies sue ReplayTV to prevent them from allowing consumers to record television shows. It’s legal to do so, but the TV industry is argueing that ReplayTV makes recording too easy. Someone might make copies of a show and pirate them.

There is no other industry that assumes their customers are criminals. If I go into a store to buy a new suit, the store takes precautions to keep me from taking one without paying, but there are no restrictions on it after I’ve bought it. The suit designer doesn’t tell me that I can’t wear it in the presence of a fashion designer who might knock it off.

Even the software industry, which often goes to ridiculous extremes to prevent piracy, doesn’t try to prevent consumers from using the software on their chosen device. Imagine a software company that won’t allow someone to install their product if a CD burner is installed on the computer.

The various entertainment industires are slowly alienating their customer base. By doing so, they are turning people into pirates. Ordinary consumers are turning to tools and technologies to help them defeat the industry protection schemes. The industries are thus creating a legitimate market for the cracking tools they hope to defeat.