Somewhere, in a long forgotten paste, I was actually (bows head in shame) a fan of Microsoft from the perspective that they were the company that brought computing to the masses. I remember reading an early book on the company and it’s development process where they talked about the concept of ‘eating your own dog food‘ whereby people internally had to use the very software they created as to empathize with their customers (this was before their software was ubiquitous on every PC sold.) It was in remembering this quote that I found so much humor in this story from a recent interview given by Bill Gates.
As reported on BoingBoing and elsewhere:
Bill Gates gave a weird interview about DRM to a group of bloggers yesterday, admitting that putting anti-copying technology into media makes it worse. He concluded by advising everyone to just skip the DRM on music by buying CDs and ripping them (presumably as opposed to buying your music from the new Microsoft Zune music store, which sells thoroughly crippled tunes).
Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers”; while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.
His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”
