MLB Fans Who Bought DRM Videos Get Hosed 299
Billosaur writes "Major League Baseball has just strengthened the case against DRM. If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work, as the previous DRM system is no longer supported. When the video is played, apparently the MLB.com servers are contacted and a license obtained to verify the authenticity of the video; this is done by a web link. That link no longer exists, and so now the videos will no longer play, even though the MLB FAQ says that a license is only obtained once and will not need to be re-obtained. The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem."
No support? Hear from my lawyer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I smell a class action coming along..
EULA? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it favours MLB they'll find a copy. But if it doesn't, it would be quite easy for them to say "We've lost all copies of that EULA but our policy back then was to put in a 1-year time limit" and given the small numbers involved, probably no-one will be able to prove otherwise. I think I'll get in the habit of saving a copy before clicking on "I Agree" from now on.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Its also buried away in a tiny text frame and opens up to a novel size.
however there is one gem which made me smile:
2. Message Features
Participation. The Website may offer opportunities for you to transmit messages in connection with various features including, but not limited to, vanity email, auctions, contests, games, blogs, video submissions message boards and chat features ("Message Features"). You must use Message Features in a respon
Re:EULA? (Score:4, Informative)
This is why DRM is evil, and so are EULAs when you are PURCHASING product.
How exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
Claiming that an EULA is not a legal document sounds somewhat hypocritical.
Re:EULA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Call 866-800-1275 and be a PITA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No support? Hear from my lawyer. (Score:5, Insightful)
and Comcast said no lawsuits. Guess what the courts said about that.
Translation? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's your problem, not ours.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now mod me troll too.
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the hell do these stupid sports-minded assholes think the major league organizations are any better than the **AA. They're getting what they deserve for their misplaced trust, just as the music/movie idiots are.
Not very tactfully put, but brutally correct. They (I'm looking especially at MLB) have been abusing their fans for years. Who do they think pays the bills?
There's only one way to bring these motherfucking bastards to their knees -- just say NO.
Yeah. The year they went on strike and cancelled the World Series I went on strike too. Their loss. I've been to hundreds of Los Angeles Dodger home games, but not any more. I still love baseball, but I follow Japanese professional baseball now.
Nonono. (Score:2)
Re:Translation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Translation? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can dig up the credit card bills, you might still be able to do a charge-back. I know it's kind of pushing it, but my mom does the CC transactions for the family business, and she says that in some cases, there is time limit for a charge-back. It's really brutal for the merchant though, $15 fees per transaction on top of losing the money. Normally, I'd say doing a chargeback two years after the purchase is pretty dickish, this situation is ridiculous. I'd check your card's policies first, but once you know for sure, I suggest that you take it up with the customer service and threaten to do a charge-back before going through the procedure.
Re:Translation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Translation? (Score:5, Informative)
While other cards have limits, the "clock restarts" in certain circumstances - for instance, if the product was sold with a 2 year warranty and they refuse warranty service, you're covered for x months after the claimed warranty expires to file a claim regarding warranty.
So, despite what the wonderful people at MLB claim, you'll probably be able to file a successful chargeback. If you get resistance from phone CSRs, file a written chargeback (crappy banks (chase, etc) can jerk you around a lot more over the phone)
BTW - Successful chargebacks are punitive to the merchants and a large number can significantly affect them financially, so this is the best way to get back at them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea that's a shame... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yea that's a shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
My point, thoough, is that the only ones with functioning videos got them illegally.
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
Re:Yea that's a shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh wait, I forgot - I stopped watching baseball the year they cancelled the world series.
Re: (Score:2)
A Slow Death (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Slow Death (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Slow Death (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Slow Death (Score:5, Funny)
Completely off-topic, but I think using phrases suchs as "Wife 2.0" and "I upgraded to the model with the nicer case" are the real reasons you get that look in the first place.
Re:A Slow Death (Score:5, Funny)
Jimmy Stewart: "Well I don't have your rights here, they're in Bill's house, and in Steve's house..."
One more reason... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One more reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. With VHS you could borrow a friends VHS deck to watch the tapes. You can not with DRM content.
2. With VHS tapes you could sell them on Ebay if you didn't want to buy a new VHS deck.
3. With VHS tapes you could have gotten tuner card for you PC and dumped them to your PC as a back up and burned your own DVDs.
What the DRM content providers are giving you is the right to use the media. You don't own the media, you can not resell it when you don't want it anymore and you can n
Re:One more reason... (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about your "Money for Nothing"!
Re:One more reason... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't fall into this trap! You did not purchase a license, you purchased a copy. There are huge differences in the rights you acquire when you purchase a copy vs. a license to view.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, OK it's a hell of a lot less convenient to carry around the five massive cans compared to one DVD and I either have to string them all together and break them down again or get up every fifteen minutes to switch reels. Not to mention the problems in archiving the damn things correctly, but dammit I'm getting all my pixels! That is, until the restoration prints come out....
Re: (Score:2)
This is one more reason not to pay money to watch grown men sweat a lot and scratch themselves.
Hell, I agree. There are plenty of neighborhoods around here where I can see that for free all day long...
Re: (Score:2)
That IS a sport in some countries. Ever watch Sumo wrestling?
Re: (Score:2)
hmmm. (Score:5, Funny)
I predict the big winners in this one will be the lawyers....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
*I'm not just talking about the legalese, but how such screens are inevitably different from reading text in the rest of the product, and how it's hard to scroll through or search through, and there's no standard EULA that it can stipulate a deviation from.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I am no lawyer but selling someone something and delivering something entirely different is fraud. When you start marketing the videos in the same manner as you do DVDs it's not unreasonable for the customer to expect the same lifespan of the product. I just don't see however much wrangling is
Agreed, mostly... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Expecting the population in general to understand the tech behind DRM is really not a fair expectation. How many non-technical people (or even technical but non-computer related) do you know that actually properly understand the concepts of domain, subdomain, top-level domain, web server, smtp/pop/imap servers and how they relate to each other? How many people do you know actually know that a "web server" isn't an alien machine but just a plain old computer, possibly assembled from more expensive parts and
Re: (Score:2)
As for the lawyers, they always win, no matter what.
(With the possible exception of Pakistan, where right now they are being clubbed)
Re: (Score:2)
Leaving the people that were hurt with perhaps a credit, or a fraction of what they were screwed of. And probably several new ulcers to boot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
An injunction against MLB against doing anything like this again would also be nice, with a nice big automatic penalty in the billions of dollars, with no cuts going to lawyers fees (that's strictly M
I wish I had that kind of time (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I for one welcome our.. er, am happy that the true stupidity of DRM is biting more consumers. remember DIVX (the circuitcity one?) Anything that reminds consumers that they're getting screwed, even if they may not immediately realize it, is a good thing for raising anti-drm awareness. People who played nice with the monopolies and paid for their DRMed content are now SOL, while people who downloaded pirate ve
Re:I wish I had that kind of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> a baseball game from previous seasons?
What kind of person has so much time on their hands that they would ever want to watch a major-league baseball game, full stop?
Re: (Score:2)
Whoa now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Dammit. I should have known that implied oral consent was not enough!
The cease-and-desist should be here any minute now...
C
Re:Whoa now... (Score:4, Funny)
Do you have the express written consent of Major League Baseball and the American Broadcasting Company?
Just ABC.
*sound of gunfire*
Re:Whoa now... (Score:5, Funny)
Phoning home is OK for E.T. (Score:5, Insightful)
If this story is true, I think a class action lawsuit is in order...
Thank You MLB (Score:2)
Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
The videos already wouldn't play if it was Cold. Or Raining. Or Night. Or Outside.
Unlocking Software (Score:5, Insightful)
MLB Strikes Out Fans Who Bought DRM Videos (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a class-action lawsuit... (Score:2)
I can't wait for this to go to court (Score:2)
At least, that's what'll happen in my dreams.
Rob
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It will happen when the plaintiff is shown the credit card bill where the defendant explicitly sold the right for reproduction (Playback at a later time) to the plaintiff. The right was revoked without due cause or compensation. The ju
THINK OF THE CHILDREN (Score:2)
There must be a mom of one of the players that has lost precious video of her son. Get her out to front the issue for the masses
I hate this kind of trick nowdays. I have a scanner driver that won't work and needs an update that requires being registered...registration page no longer exists
3D Baseball Cards (Score:2)
this is not fascism (Score:5, Insightful)
Took them long enough (Score:4, Insightful)
The change was made sometime during 2006, and its now October 2007, and people are only noticing this!?
Re:Took them long enough (Score:5, Informative)
People keep forgetting what DRM stands for (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about THEIR rights, not yours.
DRM (Score:2)
Re:People keep forgetting what DRM stands for (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM is a technical measure over-enforcing copyright. It prevents the exercise of fair use. The DRM on the MLB videos is preventing people watching their purchased copies, and the seller has no intention of fixing it. DRM has nothing to do with protecting patents or trade marks, just copyright. Distribution rights are not property.
But since we're playing this bad analogy between physical property and copyright protection, I again point out that after I buy something from a store, and take it home, it's mine to do with as I please. It's my property. If I break criminal law with it, I get investigated and prosecuted by the police. If I break a civil law with it, I get sued by the other party. At no point after I've left the mall do the guards get involved with this.
With DRM, I buy a copy of copyrighted material infected with DRM. The DRM decides what I get to do with my property, regardless of its legality. It decides what computer I play it on. It decides where I can play it. It decides whether I'm allowed to use extracts for parody or news commentary. It's unthinking rules standing over my shoulder, saying yes or no to what I can do with my purchased property, despite all of them being legal.
DRM is poisonous to fair use and normal use, and removing it or telling others how to remove it is prohibited by law. That is wrong. If mall guards did what DRM does, I'd refuse to shop at that mall too. Bet those people who bought the MLB videos wish they hadn't bought them now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Intellectual property is a fiction. It's an attempt to conflate non-physical legal protections with property to make them sound better. You have patents, copyright and trade marks.
IP is only a fiction in the sense that *physical* property rights are a fiction. Property rights delineate the boundaries of acceptable behavior regarding identifiable things, and s
Not the first time, not the last, but a good start (Score:5, Interesting)
This will happen again, I'm sure. Whenever some media company goes out of biz, whenever some media company decides that they can make more money by disabling everything they already sold, this will strike again. And more people will get pissed.
Unfortunately at the company that did it, not DRM itself. But given time, people will learn. People are used to "buying" content. They're used to buying a DVD and being able to play it 'til the earth stops turning. Changing this model will not go without resistance. It will take a while for the masses to notice that seemingly minor difference, but they will.
Unfortunately that takes time. Whether it takes too long we'll see. It will sooner or later fall back on them, though. People will stop buying content, fearing that it will some day stop to "work".
So what I started to do was to do some spinning myself. Whenever some friend of mine tries to buy something DRMified, I remind him of the time when whatever DRM crippled content backfired on him. Yes, it's another company, but it also got DRM, it just MIGHT do the same, ya know... Yes, it's a lie. Still, for some odd reason my conscience gives me an A-OK for it.
But, isn't that the real purpose of DRM? (Score:2, Insightful)
Easy for society to fix this (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't give copyright protection to publications that use copy protection. DRM -> PD. Let publishers (and their markets) decide which mutually-exclusive way to go.
Re: (Score:2)
dave
Copyright exemptions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or am I totally misremembering?
Re:Copyright exemptions? (Score:4, Informative)
I work for MLB.com... (Score:5, Informative)
I hope at least some of you would believe me, even though I have to post anonymously. I'm really just another geek working for a big corporation, trying to make ends meet.
Re:I work for MLB.com... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe a solution will be found without antipathy. Or maybe it'll take a lawsuit to make the MLB bean-counters accept that a solution will be best for the company. Either way I agree that it is going to be found, and maybe the good that comes out of this is that everyone who likes baseball will learn to think twice before buying DRMed media.
Justin.
Re:I work for MLB.com... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just remove the DRM (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too bad it won't affect many... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For reference, see "obviously".
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
If it was 20 CHILDREN then my god something must be done! WHAT about the children?!?!
Re:Too bad it won't affect many... (Score:5, Interesting)
In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.
"We cannot wrap our minds around two people as well as around one," said Mr. Slovic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Too bad it won't affect many... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the beauty of the system and the Internet. As people find out what doesn't work, they quit buying it. From your comment "it shows the system is fucked beyond reproach." shows me you are not going to be a repeat consumer. Between online rent-a-song for the Plays for Sure music to retractable email, to Vista Activation, the fact is DRM is killing sales of content as more get the fact the system is broken.
DRM, Activaction, and cost are the main reasons I left Vista upgrades out of my future plans. I have moved to Open Source. As such, DRM is now an incompatible format. I can't use DRM, so I don't buy it. Amazon got it. Apple is just now waking up to the fact.
DRM protects content. DRM kills sales. Some loss due to piracy is an issue. DRM is the answer. Some loss of sales is due to DRM. When that is a bigger problem than piracy, DRM starts to go away. It happened on floppys and came back on CDs. Items with high incidence of copyright violations is the only items with DRM on CDs. Most software CD's except Games and high cost MS products and some high priced music and movies (High Def formats) are free of DRM. Most all my purchased software CDs are DRM free.
Re: (Score:2)
Brett
Re:No surprise there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ooops... I found it hilarious that the first company to break compatibility with a system called "Plays for Sure" was the company that created the system... (Note that I said break it, companies which never implemented it in the first place don't count.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, since iTunes doesn't verify you have rights to the songs with Apple's servers every time you play them, unlike these MLB clips, nothing would happen.
If your hard drive got corrupted and you had to reinstall everything, you aren't allowed to redownload the lost files. Just like if your house burns down the record companies don't have to repla
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Serves them right (Score:4, Insightful)
They believe the marketing hype, designed to make people think it's a good thing. The people need to be educated about the dangers of DRM, and stories like this are good examples. People won't believe you without hard evidence, they're more likely to believe mass market propaganda.
Re:One down! (Score:4, Insightful)
So you take a company being noticed for screwing their customers, and you are looking for ways to give them more money. And people wonder why corporations think they can do anything they want without repercussions.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's also Moonlight [mono-project.com], the Open Source Silverlight implementation working with M$ support.
No, I don't like Microsoft either, but after working a little with Flash, and seeing their license fees for doing anything interesting with it, I heartily welcome the competition. (Something like 98% of Web users have Flash installed... According to Adobe).