Digital Intellectual Property

Legally, I have never violated any Intellectual Property laws and have never pirated any sort of material ever, but I would like to share a frustrating experience that happened to me a few weeks ago.

I like watching Tosh.0. The show is currently in its second season, and I missed a few episodes from the first season. The first season is no longer being aired on TV, so my last resort was to turn to paying for the episodes on the internet. I had two main choices - iTunes Store, and Amazon VOD. I was forced to buy from Apple because the last episode of the first season - which I wanted - was not available on Amazon. I paid for and downloaded the episodes, which I can now watch in iTunes...

...except I don't want to watch them in iTunes. I want to watch them on my HTPC running XBMC. In a perfect world, it should be a simple matter of pointing XBMC to the files and adding them to my library, except that Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management software prevents the files from being played on any software but Quicktime and iTunes. What then followed was an eight-hour adventure to figure out a way to obtain control over these video files. It eventually broke down to me running screen capture software while the video was playing, and having the stereo output of my sound card running back through my microphone input to get the audio. It nearly worked, except the screen capture software was really meant for presentation-type stuff and not smooth video, so it started getting choppy. I ultimately gave up.

There is no reason why this should be this difficult, aside from the greed of content providers and their inability to allow content to flow freely. I am never going to watch these episodes for which I've paid, and I'm not going to download any other videos from the iTMS until I figure out a way to make these videos available for me to use in any way I want. It's the same principal that has prevented me from jumping into the ebook market - why would I want to pay $15 for a license to read a specific book on a specific platform with no guarantee of keeping the book if I buy new hardware or even if the book will still be there when I wake up. Once I purchase something, I'm going to use it any way I deem fit, and if that's not agreeable to the content providers, then they aren't getting my money.