Exposing Amazon Unbox

Cory Doctorow has posted a lengthy dissection of Amazon Unbox’s user agreement on Boing Boing today and finds that it leaves a lot to be desired. Not only is the DRM very restrictive, it seems you more or less sell your soul and control of your computer to Amazon for the privilege of buying non-physical copies of movies which don’t come with the customer service we’ve come to expect from Amazon. Downloading a movie from Unbox is not at all the same as buying a DVD from Amazon. Cory says…

Movies from Amazon don’t come with the same rights as DVDs from Amazon—DVDs can be sold, given away, and watched on any player. You don’t have to give up your privacy or control over your property to watch a DVD.

I haven’t seen a breakdown of the iTunes user agreement as far as movies go, but I’m sure it isn’t as restrictive as what Amazon has in place. I understand that in order for everybody to be happy, there will have to be some form of DRM if consumers expect to legally purchase what they want. Without any DRM content owners aren’t going to play right now and we’ll be stuck with unreliable p2p downloads forever. While I’d rather have no DRM at all, I can live with some level as long as it doesn’t infringe on my usage.

The Digital age was supposed to make our lives easier. The digital delivery of movies, music, books and software should be a win for everybody. Prices should be lower while still giving the copyright owners as much if not more profit then before. No packaging or shipping and little to no production costs, the product is just bits and more bits. There are always going to be people that expect things for free and will do whatever it takes so they don’t have to pay. Punishing everybody doesn’t seem in the best interest of those that want us to give them our money. Insane DRM restrictions that prevent people from doing even basic things, like moving the content from one machine to another or making a copy, makes no sense at all.

Ideally we’ll see this play out over the next few years and hopefully things will settle down on less restrictive DRM or none at all. Don’t hold your breath waiting though as it will probably be a long wait. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days and if anybody from Amazon responds to the BoingBoing post. My feeling is that Amazon probably is on a very short leash from the studios and had they more say in the matter we wouldn’t be discussing this at all.