And neither do I, apparently. Saw a piece on Wired today discussing how quickly Microsoft got out a patch after their DRM scheme got cracked. You can measure the turnaround in days, vs. what it takes them to fix the kind of holes that can lead a cracker to turn your computer into a v1a6ra pushing spam-bot, which is apparently less important and thus takes weeks to months. This brought to mind a recent piece by Ken Levine about radio, where in discussing why KZLA changed its format after 26 years we find out from an exec:
"We work for our advertisers. Through our research and other research we know there was a large phantom cume that never got measured in Arbitron, as good as Arbitron is."
As Ken rightly points out, radio stations are supposed to broadcast in the public's interest, and he's called on folks to challenge their license. Microsoft doesn't require a license, but you would think that Microsoft would be required to look out for the public interest by fixing their software, but no. All they care about are the other conglomerates with billions to shell out in money. Fine, that's capitalism, I suppose. But I dream that there there will come a time when the Ignored Consumer will just walk away. Radio drove me away a long time ago (save NPR and student radio stations), and the DRMisation of everything under the sun threatens to do the same.
Posted by Jason at September 7, 2006 01:17 PM