A day in a DRM-free world
7:35AM – Wake up and stream some tunes to your bedroom and shower — why not, any device in the house can play your entire catalogue with no problems whatsoever.
8:05AM – You’re watching the news in HD while brushing your teeth; your DVR is seamlessly rebroadcasting it to your wife or husband’s mobile.
8:25AM – You don’t have time to finish the show, so you sideload it to your media player — which is ready to go with some other recorded shows and music you downloaded last night. Time to head to work.
8:45AM – What a pleasant surprise, your friend is on the same train as you! You share a few songs and shows wirelessly; he’s never heard this new track by the Rakes before, but now he wants to check them out. Likewise, you can’t wait to download some more episodes of that Lost show.
9:45AM – You realize you forgot to watch your Batman Begins rental, which is due today, so you drag the full-res HD video file off the disc and throw it on your player for later viewing at home — it’s a cinch. Oh no, you don’t have enough space! Not to worry Blockbuster knows you rented the video so you can just queue up the 30GB download to your home server now, and watch it later tonight when you’re home.
12:15PM – While you’re out at lunch you pass by a promo wireless media kiosk; it sends your player a few tracks thinks you might like from the new Dungen album, and it’s right, they’re great! Back at the office you buy the whole album on iTunes and drop the music right onto your Zune.
3:10PM – While you’re on the phone with your spouse letting them know you need a pickup from work today, your DVR emails you both an important breaking news clip. A high ranking politician is resigning; you watch the clip together and discuss. Then you forward that clip to your coworkers.
5:30PM – On the way home, the leader’s resignation speech is aired live on HD radio — this is definitely worth saving for posterity, so you hit the record button. When it’s done it sends the file right to your device.
6:45PM – You move your new Dungen album into your music archive from your media player, and start listening to it on your zoned home music system.
10:15PM – You finally settle in to watch Batman; the downloaded file looks great in full 1080p.
11:25PM – You’re pretty beat, it’s been a long day so you set your DVR to transfer Letterman to your player when it’s done recording, and crash out safe in the knowledge that your media will be ready for you — and whatever you may want to do with it — when you wake up.
It’s getting increasingly hard to imagine life in a DRM-free world, but is it really so far-fetched? Sure, a lot of what’s described above is possible with DRM hacks, workarounds, circumventions, transcoding and the like, but when will we, the consumers, take the power back from the media companies we’re fueling with our purchases?
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup: 
We, the consumers, are too damn lazy and/or too damn stupid to make this happen. Apathy rules in these ‘instant-gratification-or-bust!’ times.
It doesn’t help that the technology companies who could make this a reality have no financial incentive to implement it either. Why make products that are compatible with those of your competitors if you still believe your customer base only uses your products (or you want to lock them in to only using your products)?
We need a hardware equivalent of the open source community to create these devices (I only have a splashproof radio in the shower, not a waterproof streaming audio/video player built into the wall) and the necessary standards for everything to communicate seamlessly.
Good post Ryan, thank you.
You old dreamer, you. Seriously though, I can’t tell you how exciting the prospect of this kind of things is.
Trouble about it though, as stated earlier, is that until someone comes up with this type of solution, people will keep buying what’s already on the market, so there’s no motivation for companies to take the plunge.
[...] which they are trying to pass the buck - and while you are reading on the topic, go check out Ryan’s DRM-free day), but at CES 2007 I got first-hand knowledge of how they feel about consumers. I dropped by their [...]
Hello,
I totally share your view on DRM : I think it’s even as counterproductive for the media industry as for the hardware industry.
the first step towards a better user experience could be the licensing of all DRM-families by their owner: I heard for example (http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8677/53/) that Apple COULD be licensing their dear FairPlay … I don’t know if the news’s believable at all though …
It could be pretty expensive for manufacturer to include all DRM support but (the DRM support could be sold separately, why not?) at least the high end hardware would provide a far better user xp.
Second I don’t know if there are such stores in the US, but in France, a major media distributor, if not the biggest (the “FNAC” > who said FLAC? ahah … pathetic geek joke)
decided to start, alongside with a classic DRMed store, a DRM-free store (http://www.fnacmusic.com/). So did Virgin on its online store.
The prices are decent (the same as iTunes), the quality far better (MP3 ; 256Kbit/s) … hope it will work! because if such models don’t, you can be sure it will the end of the DRM-free world hope … at least in France :)
[...] equation). I hope with time, other content providers will hear what the market is saying to them. Ryan Block’s A day in a DRM-free world is a wonderful vision for this version of the [...]
[...] equation). I hope with time, other content providers will hear what the market is saying to them. Ryan Block’s A day in a DRM-free world is a wonderful vision for this version of the [...]