Sony has filed for a patent for a technology to tether a video-game to a console so that you can't sell it, loan it out, play it on a new console after your existing one is stolen or damaged, etc. Some speculate that this is intended for use with the PS3, but wherever it's deployed, it's very consistent with Sony's ongoing contempt for its customers. Once you've installed rootkits onto everyone's PCs, what's a little unfair trade practices aimed at killing the aftermarket?
The technology would allow an authentication code to be read and then rendered unreadable, making the software unplayable on any machine but the one which first read it.
DRM is often touted as "enabling business models" — e.g., the business-model of charging you more money if you want a version of the DVD that you can watch in more than one household — but here we have it being teed up to destroy the business model of anyone who makes a little bread selling old games.
This "new business model" business is really bogus. They take the media that today lets you do everything copyright permits — timeshifting and quotation, format-shifting and backup — and they take away all those things. Then they painfully dribble each of those rights back as a "feature" that you pay extra for.
Drip, drip, drip — each drop of functionality painfully and expensively squeezed into your living room, every time you want to do something you used to do for free.
That's not a business-model. That's a urinary tract infection.
(via Wonderland)
