DRM: This is getting silly

Sometimes I feel like some of my lectures here at the HTWK Leipzig devolve into long tirades against the unwise practices of media companies with regard to digital rights management. Testing legal users’ patience by subjecting them to endless warnings and incompatibilities does not strike me or pretty much anyone else other than media companies as a good idea. Latest case in point: a friend posted a YouTube video on his Facebook page today. I clicked the thumbnail to start the clip and saw this instead:

Winning friends, one slap in the face at a time

[Translation: This video contains content from Sony Music Entertainment. It is no longer available in your country.] I find this doubly annoying. For one, I cannot see the fake trailer to the Titanic sequel, which pretty much lowers my quality of life a few notches right there. Adding to the agony is the fact that the content was once available, but no longer is, which makes me feel like I missed out on some great moment of free-ranging content. Smack, smack. Ouch.

This is not good customer management, and just drives people toward illegal sources for their media. As this graphic humorously portrays (from Reddit user Question Everything via Leander Wattig), pirated media is easier to use than legit content, which pretty much anyone over the age of ten knows. This needs to change, or things are just going to get worse.

Say, if anyone living in a country where this content flows freely felt like ripping and shipping this video, I would sure appreciate it. The FF extension 1-Click YouTube Video Downloader works like magic.