Comment Number:	539814-00554
Received:	1/12/2009 1:14:19 PM
Organization:
Commenter:	Greg Baker
State:	WI
Agency:	Federal Trade Commission
Rule:	FTC Town Hall to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies - Event Takes Place Wednesday, March 25, 2009, in Seattle
Attachments:

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Comments:

The use of DRM by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders remains an unfair and impractical solution for consumers, limiting choices when purchasing hardware and creating mini-monopolies around specific formats. The way DRM works now, consumers are often forced to purchase specific hardware devices to play media which should be playable by any number of devices. A prime example of this is music purchased through Real's Rhapsody Music Store. Such music can only be played on a device which support the PlaysForSure DRM model. This eliminates all iPods and most set-top box media players. If a consumer purchases music or movies for one DRM system and then chooses to purchase a different player in the future, there is a good chance that all of their media will be rendered unplayable when, in fact, it is fully compatible, but not playable due to DRM restrictions. In a similar light, digital content providers are pressured less to compete with other digital content providers on price or quality of content if they control a majority of the hardware market because those users are "locked in" to a specific format. However, these restrictions are completely artificial because almost all digital media formats are natively cross-hardware compatible. It is only when DRM is introduced that consumers options are restricted and incompatibility is introduced. As a consumer, I would purchase more and more items online if I knew that I could play my content on a device of my choice, but as it is, I can not, so the growth of the market suffers as other consumers, like me, choose to be very selective in what digital purchases they make.