Criminalizing Consumers
There has been a growing trend over the past several years which has resulted in companies creating criminals out of their own consumers. The two largest examples of this that comes to mind is the MPAA and the RIAA. The popular culture creates fans of music and movies and then the MPAA and RIAA turn around and sue them. Why? What does it accomplish?
The DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) makes it illegal to reverse engineer or break the protection/encryption on any media. That means that while it’s legal to make a copy of the content of a DVD (fair use), it is illegal to break the encryption on the DVD to make the copy. I’m talking about legitimate fair use here, not DVD pirates. The RIAA wants it to be made illegal to rip CDs you own to MP3s so you can’t transfer them to your portable music player.
Maybe these organizations (which claim they only do what they are told to do by their constituent companies) really believe that their hold on the popular culture is so strong that not only will we put up with the lawsuits, but we’ll pay their outragous “settlement” offers and still continue to buy their products. A few things will have to occur before these guys will start to get it: people will have to stand up to these lawsuits, people will have to stop buying their products, and we have to create our own popular culture that doesn’t revolve around Hollywood. Yeah, I’m holding my breath for that one.
It’s not just these guys that are getting in on the act. Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage program was released as a patch a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to notify you when your copy of Windows is not legitimate. There have also been many complaints that the software is also erroneously claiming that copies are pirated. There’s no appeals process for this. You get the ‘opportunity’ to buy a legitimate copy, possibly at a discounted rate. If I got this after already buying a legitimate copy, I’d be pissed! As of yet, Microsoft hasn’t used this information to either prosecute or shut off illegal copies. However, who’s to say after a grace period (maybe to coincide with the launch of Vista) that they won’t decide to make WGA the standard for enforcing that everyone has a legimitimate copy, similar to Valve’s Steam.
Where are the days when companies dealt with their consumers and assumed that they were honest? Sure, sometimes people aren’t honest and you have to prosecute shoplifters. We’ve gone beyond prosecuting the thiefs and we’re punishing the honest patrons who just want to get the most from the product they purchased.
Tags: criminal, consumers, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Windows Genuine Advantage, WGA, DMCA, DVD, CD, ripping, lawsuits