DRM gets a fresh face: Ultraviolet.
Ask any tech competent person about DRM and they’ll correctly tell you it’s useless — unless of course you goal is to piss off someone and neuter their experience with legally obtained content. The image that has attached itself to DRM isn’t going away. So, content creators have to get crafty every now and then. (Too bad they can’t put that creativity into creating actual legitimate business models that don’t fuck over consumers…) Meet the latest face in DRM: UltraViolet.
The aim of UltraViolet is to be a digital, cloud-based locker of sorts that will “just work”. The claim to fame is that no matter the destination, whether it be gaming console, smartphone, tv, computer, DVR, etc., UltraViolet will allow playback of your content without hiccup. Though of course, that was the original claim of your standard DRM scheme. And we all know how that played out. Not to mention, a cloud-based account signals to me that an internet connection would be required to authorize/de-authorize devices to play your content. For a fair chunk of users, that wouldn’t be a problem. But alas, not all of us have internet. What are those people going to do? Everyone involved managed to get one thing right though — it’s free.
There’s plenty of big name media partners, physical, and digital retailers jumping on board, so DECE UltraViolet looks like it may stick around for a little while. Let’s just hope it goes better than the last dozen and a half DRM it-always-works schemes. Anyone remotely excited? Or would you rather keep playback across devices in your own hands, manually, and without a needed internet connection? Ya…me too.
Author: Mike Norris
visit my websiteGadget lover, smartphone collector, and beer connoisseur. I've been writing about gadgets for three years now and loving every minute of it. Outside of the digital landscape, I enjoy being active outdoors. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to drop me a line!
