Two thumbs up

March 26, 2002

An excellent take on the futility of copy protection from Roger Ebert: Don't Confuse Fans With Pirates

That Universal has copy-protected it, and blocked out Macs and DVD players altogether, has to be the worst marketing decision in consumer electronics since the original DivX format (which was Circuit City's widely hated, intrusive pay-per-view system). It confuses fans with pirates. My guess is that no musician or band still actively engaged in trying to build an audience will want to come anywhere near it.