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Fans shafted as Major League Baseball revokes DRM licenses
The crack of the bat, the smell of the grass and the pain of losing your purchased content to DRM deactivation. In what can only be called the biggest bonehead move since Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online.
Due to an earlier decision to switch DRM providers, MLB's new content and old content are managed by different license authentication servers. After making the switch, MLB has arbitrarily decided it has no intention of honoring its earlier commitments to fans who purchased downloaded games under the old system, thereby rendering many fans shut-out.
Claiming the full-game downloads were "one-time sales", MLB is completely unapologetic to fans who've lost their purchased content to the horrors of DRM death. Quoted on Boing Boing, baseball super-fan and author Alan Wood writes, "Just got off the phone with a MLB customer service supervisor. [who said] 'MLB no longer supports the DDS system' that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.'"
Shame on you Major League Baseball, this is fraud. We've warned Download Squad readers that buying DRM "protected" media is a crap-shoot, but when issuing those warnings we were mostly concerned about smaller media sales outlets going out-of-business in an ever evolving digital media landscape. This goes so far beyond those fears, with an active and profitable business making a clear and informed decision to yank the DRM rug out from under your purchased content.
Is it any wonder non-drm downloads via P2P are so popular? It's not simply about "free" in the base, capitalist notion of how much money changed hands, it's more pointedly about "freedom", the freedom to do what you wish with the content you've collected. If consumers aren't given options which allow them to get their content free as in freedom, they'll take that content free as in beer.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsToddNov 7th 2007 1:24PM
The tone of this blog post sounds "surprised", like no one ever saw this coming.
Those of you stuck with dead Windows Media baseball games ( that you PAID for ) you can use FairUse4WM to rinse away that nasty DRM. Do a Google search, you'll find the exe and some instructions out there.
Also, all you Zune 1 and 2 fans out there, you can expect the same fate for all your media files too.
NotAFanNov 7th 2007 2:43PM
If I had purchased this content and they had done this to me, I would do exactly as the first comment suggests, and then post all those games where they could be accessed by the public.
MLB is stealing from their fans. It's quite reasonable to return the favor.
JamesNov 7th 2007 3:30PM
I can't wait to see if this one holds up in court. Maybe a nice juicy class action suit will set a good example and make people think twice about the cost/benefit situation with DRM...
reddog_X2000Nov 7th 2007 8:40PM
MLB is probably taking a hard line until they can assess how much of a problem this will cause them. If they see lots of bad publicity and/or lawsuits, they'll back down.
It kinda sucks that they won't just fix the issue because it's the right thing to do.
jonoNov 8th 2007 10:38AM
And yet another reason why baseball is a dumba@@ sport.
DNNov 8th 2007 3:01PM
Use FairUse4WM to strip the DRM from files you've already purchased. It's ridiculous that it has to come to this, but hopefully this will provide a workaround for people locked out from using media they've already paid for.
garethNov 9th 2007 9:48AM
Unfortunately, I believe for these Fairuse programs to work, you need an active Server to unlock the files before the stripping can begin. Its worth a try, but i wouldn't hold my breath.