Google Kills Off Videos People Thought They Had Purchased
from the see-why-DRM-sucks? dept
It’s tough for many to remember these days, following the growth of YouTube and free videos online, but in January of 2006, when Google launched its online video service it was supposed to change the world. Remember, they had all these partners signed up who were going to sell video content via Google? It seemed pretty pointless at the time and the near total failure of the video sales to take off simply confirmed it. One of the key points that seemed particularly poorly thought out was the decision to create yet another type of DRM that would require the content you bought to call home every time you wanted to play it. Plenty of people pointed out all of the problems with this idea, with one big one being that, should Google ever kill the service, the content people “bought” would no longer be available. Guess what? Google is killing off the service and the content people “bought” will no longer be available. Apparently Google is handing out credits for Google Checkout for those who bought videos, but they can’t use those credits to buy the videos anywhere else. Of course, chances are many of those videos are now available for free on Google-owned YouTube, but that’s a separate point. In the meantime, does anyone else find it ridiculous that anyone who makes or uses any kind of tool to circumvent this DRM to view the content that they legally purchased will now be breaking the DMCA’s anti-circumvention laws and could face jailtime?
