Content Protection, specifically the incoherent way it has so far been implemented, has been counter-productive. It's the law of unintended consequences at work. An example is plain old region coding for DVDs.
Region Coding has been a gift to pirates in markets like Russia, India, and China. Delayed releases give pirates opportunity to fill a demand. Bootleg copies typically also have local language subtitles. Now those markets are "spoiled" , so to speak, and the best the studios can do is offer cheap "bootleg-like" DVDs within days of a movie's release. It's an attempt to compete with the pirates, and not very successful. And who's to blame for that? Their own stupidity.
I see DRM as similar in principle. Making it difficult to format-shift only alienates customers and makes breaking *ALL* copyright protection acceptable in peoples' minds.
What about Blu-Ray, you ask? First, it's basically beta or even alpha, released without finished standards. VHS and DVD were successful in large part due to the standards being set in stone. A 10-year old DVD set-top player can play all recent releases. The way Blu-Ray looks now isn't good. Profiles and standards are constantly changing. Joe Average isn't going to appreciate having a new release *NOT* play in his Profile 1.0 player. He won't want to mess with firmware updates. And if (when?) Sony decides to turn on the full array of HDCP, expect a minor consumer revolt. It's a mess. Sony did succeed in killing HD-DVD, but at what cost?
High Definition is the new bugaboo and the major players are determined to lock it down. HDCP is aimed at least partly at the "analog hole". Any signal not over HDMI is to be displayed at DVD resolution only. Recently, there were some DivX players capable of full hi-res that were pulled from the U.S. market, which is perhaps indicative of pressure being applied. As for me, I occasionally record DTV hi-definition transport streams on my HTPC (home theater PC) and convert (at full res) to XviD, storing them on big hard drives. [shrugs] They're for my own use only and I can play them anytime, although I'm selective and don't do it all that much. The content must be worthwhile.
Before DVD took off, some of you may remember, the Chinese had a couple of competing standards: SVCD and CVD. It's likely they are also now developing alternatives to Blu-Ray. Sony can easily kill their own baby with excessive restrictions. And it's all in vain. Again, anything that can be played can be copied. BD encryption is already broken.
I'm sitting this one out. No DRM stuff for me, and no Blu-Ray, at least until it is seen how things shake out. For those of you with HDTVs, I suggest you get a good upconverting DVD player and likewise wait for hi-def standards to solidify. Upconverted DVDs look damn good on my HDTVs.
