Federal Trade Commission To Scrutinize DRM

Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations." The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM" and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."

Re:Woot!

[Jurily]

2009: The Year Of Consumer Protection!

Governments are smart

[aethelwyrd]

I'm sure the government knows exactly what its doing. They will have a bunch of town hall meetings, do a lot of research and studies, collect a lot of money from large corporations and then come up with a centralized DRM server that everyone will be required by law to use.

Re:Woot!

[morgan_greywolf]

More like 2009: The Year of DRM on the Desktop, Laptop, Palmtop, Media Player, DVR, Television, The Automobile, Appliances, Your Brain, etc.

This won't amount to anything. The MAFIAA wouldn't have it any other way.

Hmm...

[XPeter]

The Government is getting ready to "Take a hard look at DRM". Hey, you never know. If they look hard enough they might find that EA started a 50 billion dollar ponzi scheme! Oh man, wouldn't that be great.

Re:Woot!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

That's probably because the "DRM on the Linux" [wikipedia.org] isn't relevant to this discussion.

Re:Video Games a Bad Candidate,this doesn't bode w

[ultranova]

That's because sugar pills don't have any side-effects.

Maybe they're sugar pills, or maybe they're dried blood serum of Ebola victims rolled into pills and personally cursed by the High Priest of the Church of Satan to weed the stupid from the world. All you know for sure is that you got them from some shady character on the Internet who's whereabouts you don't know and who is unlikely to ever make business with you again, making him far less trustworthy or interested in your continued wellbeing than the neighbourhood drug dealer. So the question is:

Do you feel lucky, punk ?

Re:Woot!

[nsheppar]

It could be made like the surgeon general's warning on tobacco products: Warning, buying this product and expecting it to work properly without intrusive copyright protection may be hazardous to your sanity.

Re:Woot!

[Hurricane78]

Except that they just pulled DRM from the iTunes store. Completely.

So... how do I put this...?
I think Dr. Cox says it best [youtube.com].