Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Elite DRM machine

Ars Technica is reported that the Microsoft XBox 360 Elite may be coming with some new restrictions and rules. Apparently, some of the restrictions may include:
  • Not being able to transfer data from the 120 GB hard drive to the 20 GB hard drive
  • data stored on the 120GB hard disk will be automatically deleted
  • any data stored on the 20 GB hard drive will be deleted once it is moved over to another drive
  • You can't move data from multiple drives over to the 120 GB version
  • And finally, once the data has been moved it can't be moved back to the original drive that it was on previously

I think that some of these rules are with in reason given the fact that the Microsoft has a responsibility to protect their content, as well as, the content being provided to them from other developers. But at the same time, Microsoft must realize that there may be many people out there that have filled one or more drives with content from XBox Live or wish to back up the stuff that they have downloaded.

Microsoft, instead of protecting their content may actually be creating a situation where they are encouraging more piracy. I believe that people may not want to go through the trouble of re-buying their content or re-Downloading it(if Microsoft allows them to do so). Leading some people to think of alternatives, such as, find ways of hacking the system or finding ways to copy their content. Which of course would be a bad situation for Microsoft.

Content producers need to come to the realization that the more they lock down their content, the more people will be encourage to pirate, and until they realize this, we will have to deal with more situations like the XBox Elite. Not that Microsoft is completely the bad guy in this situation, as I can bet that the MPAA probably has something to do with these new rules. I had hoped that Microsoft would push back against content producers and allow for more openness in their system. But I guess, we can only hope for some in the future.

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