Anti DRM group DefectiveByDesign will be boycotting the Microsoft Vista Launch Events in NYC over all the DRM that will be in the soon-to-be released Vista. It is true that Vista will be packed with plenty of DRM which is especially annoying for any Media Center Edition fans due to the many restrictions involved with streaming content around their house, placeshifting and making copies of PVR recorded media and paid content, just to name a few.
But DefectiveByDesign, as Chris Lanier has correctly pointed out, are targeting the wrong people. Microsoft is mostly using DRM because it has too in order to meet regulations and allow Vista to play DRM media files.
Bill Gates has said he is not a fan of DRM, but that's not to say Microsoft doesn't have its own flaws when it comes to DRM (Zune for example). However, the targets that DefectiveByDesign should really be concentrating on are such organizations like the RIAA, the MPAA and Apple with its Fairplay, rather than boycotting a Vista Launch event.
Simply attacking a company simply because it implements DRM in its products will just cause people to lose respect for DefectiveByDesign.
1. You mean to say that if the company that controls roughly 90% of the home pc market told the RIAA, MPAA and others that it wasn't going to include all the DRM bs into Vista, then they wouldn't cave.
Hollywood wants their DVD's to play in computers or it wouldn't have spent all the time and money working with MS that they have. So if MS said "No!" then we wouldn't have all this DRM.
MS is as much at fault as anyone else.
Posted at 1:12PM on Jan 29th 2007 by Danny Pomeroy