Digital Home Thoughts: Is DRM All About Re-Selling You The Same Stuff Again?

"...this desire to sell all new stuff goes far beyond movies and music and Microsoft, all the way to the televisions and stereo systems upon which these old hits are played. This is an especially exciting time for TV manufacturers, because they have never really been in a position to participate in such a feeding frenzy. In the U.S., the old NTSC video standard made all video content backward compatible right up until today. You can still watch American Idol just fine, for example, on an old DuMont TV from 1948, but not for much longer. And it is not just TV and stereo manufacturers who want in on the game: PC hardware vendors, too, are eager to sell us all new parts, just as they always have been."

Cringely tackles the DRM issue, and dishes out an opinion that's the opposite of another article that has been making the rounds this week. Although I dislike DRM as much as anyone else - no, check that, I really hate it and bypass it whenever and however I can - I'm going to side with Cringely on this one. DRM is a fact of life and nothing in Vista is so draconian that it's going to hurt sales of the OS. I also agree with him that Vista is about selling new hardware - the upgrade pricing that Microsoft has chosen all but guarantees that only a few geeks are going to be upgrading their systems (raises hand). Most people are going to get Vista when they get a new PC - and I don't think that's such a bad thing for users (though it will slow the adoption rate of Vista a great deal).