Making your product easy to purchase and simple to use directly affects adoption. This is especially true for the purchase of digital music and movies. I thought it a sign of the times to read essentially an argument for better and more universal solutions to DRM (Digital Rights Management) to get it’s act together –– or else face the consumer’s answer to that problem: pirate it.
Brad Hunt, the Chief Technical Officer for MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) addressed the Digital Home Developers Conference with a warning to keep it simple or face more dire consequences for profitability.
“… Hunt conceded that many people already are frustrated at having to buy multiple copies of the same content to use on different commercial devices.
“I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content,” he said. “The issue we face today is that consumers are buying content that uses specific DRM and that, in turn, is gradually creating a world of separate DRM systems.”
Hunt said the MPAA recognized the need to create an interoperability DRM solution (or, a DRM ecosystem as he described it) and said that “the consumer, if he or she has already purchased licensed material, should certainly be able to transfer that content to any other new or old device.”
Customers expect interoperability of devices and purchased media. But you know it’s a mess when there’s 3 different groups with their own agendas trying to sort it out: the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) and the Coral Consortium.
All three are developing home-network device interoperability guidelines and standards, as well as trying to come up with separate logo and certification programs that consumers will recognize. Still, all three are currently working independently of one another.
Yikes. I think it’s particularily telling that this point of view comes from the chief technical officer at MPAA. Now if only the marketing and legal arms of these groups would understand the revenue consequences at hand, they might be able to finally get serious about improving the customer experience. The UX here has a direct affect on profitability. The harder it is to move media you’ve purchased from device to device, the more likely customers are to take matters into their own hands. The customers of the future expect simplicity and interoperability.
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