Author: Jonathan Riggall

Alongside fighting piracy, games companies are widening their targets to include the rental, and second-hand game markets.

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Epic Games’ (makers of Gears of War)President Michael Caps complains that piracy has stopped them making PC games altogether, and the second hand market is pushing developers towards solutions that stop it. Recently, and organization representing the games industry in Belguim managed to change the law to make game rental there illegal.

I can totally understand companies being worried about piracy, although their response has often been to punish the consumer, but stopping rental and second hand purchases is ridiculous. I’m yet to hear the motor industry make similar complaints about second hand cars, and video rental has been the norm for years.

It is especially painful to hear this kind of mean spirited stuff from an industry that is in such good health – still growing quickly, and predicted to outsell video and music this year in Britain alone. With a generally young demographic, this is impressive. The idea that sales will improve if gamers can’t try out games, as people often do with rental, or sell their old games to buy new ones, is pretty bad.

Today is International Caps Lock Day, a celebration of what is, according to Lifehacker, “the most useless key on your keyboard”.

Did you know there is a group dedicated to eradicating the Caps Lock key? I had no idea, but their site, CAPSoff.org offers a fairly comprehensive arguement for the removal of this oft accidentaLLY PRESSED KEY. Oops.

They argue that the Caps Lock key is badly positioned, and also performs a function no one really uses UNLESS THEY WANT TO SHOUT. CAPSoff are campaigning for more choice in keyboard design for consumers: For example, better ergonomic designs for the left of the keyboard, a left enter key, a programmable key and so on. There are other suggestions for redesigning the keyboard too, the one I was attracted to the most was a detachable number pad, usually found to the right of the keyboard. This would perhaps be preferable for left-handed people, or for the bored ambidextrous among us.

While I do occasionally hit it without meaning to, I am so used to this layout, it hadn’t occurred to me it might be time to rethink things.
Lifehacker offers a few technical ways to change the function of caps lock, or disable it completely; all very useful if you find it infuriating. For a less subtle approach, there’s this video on YouTube.

As a MacBook owner, I would miss it just because it has a little green light on it, and you can sell me anything with lights on. So remapping it would be acceptable, but if it was removed on a future keyboard I’d want another lit key to replace it!

I recently started using Beatport SYNC on my MacBook, as I like the basic DJ features (I am the DJ king of my living room!), and find it a more enjoyable way to listen to music than using iTunes. I was completely happy until I tried to play the tracks I had bought through the iTunes store; they are protected with Apple’s FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management) system and won’t work outside iTunes. That irritated me.

I could have downloaded these tracks illegally and been free to listen to the music as I wanted, but because I had actually bought the tracks I couldn’t. Rob Fayer at gamesindustry.biz, makes a similar complaint, calling DRM “hated and broken”. The point of DRM is to curb piracy but it punishes the paying customer while having no discernible effect on piracy.

Of course, there are programs to convert DRM protected files to MP3, but that also puts you in a legal grey area (more likely an illegal area). Fayer argues that as long as paid-for products are more annoying to use than the pirated versions, customers are almost being driven towards piracy. I think people would be more likely to download music legally if it was DRM free.

The recent legal fight between RealNetworks and movie studios highlights how out of touch the “creative industry” is; a world without RealDVD is not one without people ripping DVDs or downloading illegal BitTorrents. Copy protection doesn’t stop people copying, so it should be obvious another solution is needed.

iTunes does now offer some of its music DRM free, at a premium, and Napster also offers unprotected files. I hope this is the beginning of the end: shouldn’t we be trusted to use the things we buy legally? For now, I’ll stick to buying CDs and DRM free music.

April 7th 2010 Update:

Since I wrote that piece, most companies have ceased to use DRM, meaning files can now be freely used by users in whatever program or device they please. However as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch highlights, some companies are still adding data to files that could be used to control usage. Continue reading “What is DRM for?”