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Baseball’s DRM Strikes Out
If you create enough of a stink about it, you’ll force a company to attempt to fix a mistake.
[Quote:]
On Thursday, MLB.com vice president of corporate communications Matthew Gould expressed regret for the snafu, saying the site’s transition from its former DRM system “was somewhat inelegant.” He said the deactivation of old downloads “was something that we just didn’t anticipate.”
Gould said people who had downloaded regular-season games from 2006 and earlier would be offered a new, free download at the same quality as before, while buyers of postseason games would get a higher-resolution replacement. (In a follow-up e-mail, Gould explained that downloads for 2004 came in a 320×240 resolution, with those for the next two years at 400×300–both considerably duller than the 640×480 resolution of MLB.com’s current downloads.)
MLB’s DRM system still has issues of its own, though. It requires Windows Media Player 10, limiting buyers to computers running recent versions of Windows. It also does not permit you to transfer your playback license to more than three computers, ever. Once you sell or dispose of those three computers, you can’t watch those downloads anymore.
Gould said he was aware of that last problem, but did not say that MLB.com would commit to fixing it.
So, in other words, quit whining and go watch your baseball. While we let you.
Bears repeating:
Reaching for Apple, Falling Short
[Quote:]
Apple’s deal with AT&T was: “We’ll design what we like. We won’t even tell you what the thing looks like. In return, you get an exclusive.”
Maybe that departure from the usual phone maker/carrier situation was part of the inspiration behind the new T-Mobile Shadow smartphone, which went on sale last week for $150 (with a two-year service commitment).
This phone wasn’t designed by a cellphone maker at all; according to the company, it was designed by T-Mobile’s own chief executive, Robert Dotson, working with a former Apple employee. And if you believe the news release, the result is “designed to significantly reduce the complexity often associated with many feature-rich devices, while maintaining all the powerful calling, messaging and picture sharing capabilities people crave.”
Well, in that case, how could it miss?
The resulting phone is beautiful. Its aspirations to Appleness are evident immediately: there’s the nearly buttonless façade, the huge black expanse of screen, the iPod-like control dial that both spins through lists and clicks at the four compass points. It even lights up when you have messages waiting.
[..]
But then you turn the thing on.