Digital rights market to boom, study says

TalkBack 14 of 14:

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

DRM is not a revenue enhancer

Drm might help some corporations control thier documents but it will never have much impact on retail software, music or media sales. The majority of copyrighted stuff downloaded is barely used if at all. Movies now downloaded would probably be rented, most apps downloaded are never used, and most music downloaded would simply never be purchased.

Drm is simply a fancy way to say rental ware. The ultimate DRM would force you to pay per use for media/software, thus allowing copyright holders, mostly corporations the ability to collect steady streams of revenue from it's users for as long as the user intends to us it.

I worked for a software company one time and it was the software maintenance contracts that kept the company afloat. Companies would pay out hundreds of dollars a month just to get support every month. The funny thing was 99% of the support was unnecessary, most companies never needed it and those that did were mostly idiots. My point is any way you can generate a continous cash flow for providing very little if any service, that costs you most nothing is a goldmine.

This is what all software and content companies are searching for, You will buy software or content, then after so many uses you will have to pay more to keep using it.

The only catch to all this, is there is a limit to how much the consumer will pay. If sofware and content becomes too costly and full of fees consumers will find other ways to spend thier money.

The pace of technology is slowing drastically as technical limits are being reached. While a 10 year old PC would probably not be usuable today. A PC bought today might easily be adequate in 10 years from now. (Additional memory and hd storage may be needed, but increases in computing power will probably not add much in the way of value or usefulness for the average consumer for the forseeable future.)

What this means is that if stuff becomes too highly filled with drm a vast market for today's very useful and largely unprotected hardware and software and media will exist.

The bottom line is that one way or another DRM will fail to deliver, it will add no value to the consumers and produce no addtional income for the companies using it. The fact is DRM may end up putting more companies out of business then it helps.

There is software that I use only on special occasions (like Partition Magic). I might pay a few $$ to be able to use it for a couple of days when I need it rather then the $70 or so that it costs retail but if everybody just rented it instead of buying it then that might mean a lot less revenue rather then more. Which is just another reason why drm is bound to fail.

Posted by: Robertbrice   Posted on: 07/03/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now