The High Price of DRM: Google Kills Pay Video

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So what happens when a provider, let’s say Google, kills their digital media pay service?

After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

Sucks, don’t it?

The rest of the announcement:

As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program.

Interestingly, Google is pressing forward with another digital media play by supporting (rather than running) music service “gBox” — which will sell DRM-free Universal tracks beginning 8/21:

Google will get standard advertising fees rather than a cut of sales under the arrangement. The ads, which would appear when a Google user searches for specific terms such as the name of an artist, will direct the user to gBox.

3 thoughts on “The High Price of DRM: Google Kills Pay Video”

  1. Wow. That is the issue isn’t it? What happens when you’re not allowed to use the things you paid for because the company doesn’t exist or stops supporting it. What then?

  2. Simple, exactly what we see now. The user looses.

    DRM, in any form we have now, violates the individual rights. The founding fathers would be ashamed. Everyone, vote progressive or else you’ll loose every right you have.

    Of course, people of good conscience, will violate DRM to copy whatever they’ve paid for, for their own use, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you have to break the law to follow the spirit of the law (in this case, the higher law being individual rights) then law as currently stated, is not legal and therefore non-binding, or at least that is how we should treat it.

    I hope all those who downloaded google’s stuff have found a way to break the DRM and save a copy. It’s their moral right to do so.

    Eventually, if the mega-rich media moguls are dethrowned, we’ll get our rights back. Until then, most who care, will do the same thing to DRM that was done to the ban on alcohol during prohibition, ignore it and do what they want anyway. Hey, it’s the real American Way.

  3. hope all those who downloaded google’s stuff have found a way to break the DRM and save a copy. It’s their moral right to do so.

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