SanDisk's Big Announcement? How They've Made Flash Less Useful

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the just-great dept

At some point, you would think that everyone would stop buying the industry line about how copy protection technology helps “motivate” content producers. Copy protection makes the content less usable and therefore less valuable to users. In other words, it means they’re willing to pay a lot less for it. There’s no resale market. They’re limited in what they can do with it. It’s a value decreasing proposition. Yet, the big content providers claim that it’s necessary, and companies believe what they’re fed. So, along comes SanDisk, who went around last week telling everyone they had a big announcement this week. What was it? That they’ve installed their own copy protection technology on flash cards for mobile devices. The journalist at Infoworld repeats the industry line that somehow this “will motivate providers of music, games, movies and other content to sell those products for mobile phones.” It may motivate them to try, but it doesn’t do much to motivate buyers to buy. It’s time that someone called the bluff on this claim. If there are enough people looking for content on their mobile phones, the content providers will find the business models that make sense — and those aren’t made up business models invented by the copy protection, but business models that embrace giving people what they want. Meanwhile, having yet another version of copy protection out there isn’t going to make anyone very excited. It’s just going to make people less interested in the content.