Amazon Unbox: Avoid it like the plague

I wish more people read my blog. Because I think this is a really important issue. I am so sick of reading about DRM and the abusive intentions of the content "owners"...

Cory Doctorow has presented an incisive examination of Amazon's new digital content service called "Unbox".

I'm really totally confused... after reading Cory's article, I expected that there would be at least some sort of price break for becoming enslaved to this service... so I checked on prices for "Napolean Dynamite"... and found the DVD could be purchased from Amazon for $14.99, while the Unboxed edition would cost $17.97... (which included the dubious privilege of allowing me a high-res version viewable on a computer and a version viewable on a portable device... woohoo).

Oh... and I noticed that Unbox won't work on my Apple MacOS machines...

That's funny because I'm pretty sure you can watch all the movies you buy on Apple's iTunes Music Store on your PC... with QuickTime - which works well on both Mac's and PC's.

A quick look shows that (randomly, for instance), "Pirates of the Carribean" goes for $9.99 on iTunes, and for $13.11 as a DVD from Amazon. That seems more reasonable (at least it's cheaper, and there is no installed software consuming my "spare" CPU power that may invalidate my QuickTime file with no notice or appeal). Apple's movies are a slightly lower resolution (640 x 480) than what you might get from a DVD.

Amazon's decision to endorse this particular business model would seem to be really really really dangerous... they've spent years fighting the naysayers who said they could never be profitable, that their model couldn't work, etc. etc. and now have quite a following of loyal customers...

... and I count myself as one of them.

If it weren't for Cory's article, I probably wouldn't have read the fine print in the Unbox agreement and would have just click-signed it. Why? Well, because Amazon has always treated me well. Before this, I would have thought they implicitly agreed with Google's "do no evil" clause.

Will this policy change how people feel about Amazon? Should it? Tell your friends to beware...

I'm sure I'll continue to buy my books from Amazon... but I will certainly keep my eyes open. I like Amazon - I want them to do well. I hope they rethink their DRM business model...

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