Next time someone trots out the old argument that “only pirates hate digital rights management (DRM),” just point out what just happened at the old Googleplex. They just canceled their pay-per-download Google Video site and locked everyone out of the content that they legally paid for. We all knew this could happen with DRM, and now it has.
Buyers have a grand total of 2 days to enjoy their downloaded video before losing access to it forever. Not that I used this source, and not that they really had much content, but it should put the fear in anyone who does buy DRM-ed content online.
I personally use Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon Unbox on TiVo fairly frequently, and both could easily lock me out of my purchases if they so desired. I’ve already been bitten by the handcuffs put on Amazon by content providers – new releases can’t be re-downloaded within so many days (usually 90 from the looks of it) even if you didn’t watch them yet. I’ve so far paid for 3 rental movies that I didn’t get to see because they were deleted off the TiVo before I could watch them. At least they were $.99 sale items…
By the way, being the “do no evil” company (and probably lacking customers for this service) Google has decided to refund 100% of Video purchase cost in the form of Google Checkout credits. At least they are being nice-ish…
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