DRM Nuisance!

Just thought I would post a rant on here about the current situation regarding digital rights management in distrubution of digital video over the internet. I recently saw an ad on channel 5 promoting a new service to download CSI shows from their website. You can choose whatever episode you want and download it and watch it for 14 days. It cost's about £2, which is quite good because once you know what happens in an episode of CSI, you probably won't watch it again so it doesn't really matter about the time restriction on the files. GREAT, I thought. I was wrong.

Turns out this service is not available if you use a macintosh. Fantastic. 'Why?' I thought, so I dropped them an email. Here is the response...

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Greetings,

Thank you for contacting the Five Download Support Team.

Hello, sir. At this time, the Mac OS does not support the Digital Rights Management we use to secure our content. We are always looking to expand our service and if in the future DRM is supported for the Windows Media Player on the Mac OS, then we can begin to plan coverage for the Mac OS.

For more information on running Windows on your Mac, please visit:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

For more information on Microsoft's compatibility with Macintosh platforms and Windows Media Player, please visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/mac/mp9/readme.aspx#playingprotected

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As a budding film maker, this really really annoyed me. Especially with the market for online video sales rocketing. It's not Five's fault. Neither is it MTV's fault that I can't watch their online shows. It's the operating system companies' fault, well in my opinion anyway. Microsoft know that most people who will be watching these videos will be using the windows platform. This is why they have no plans to develop windows media DRM for the Mac OS. Personally, I am not going to go out and buy windows and install it on my mac just to watch videos. This is what they want. If DRM really has a future, it needs to be cross-platform.

More and more people are switching to the Macintosh everyday. They are tired with the security holes in windows and should have a free choice to switch if they so choose. In my opinion, Mircrosoft and Apple need to get together to work on a cross platform DRM system so that users have a free choice of what platform they use. Instead, you have Apple with iTunes for Mac and Windows, leaving competitors such as MTV and Five only being able to show their content to Windows users, cutting down their target audience considerably. With this in mind, it seems only logical to have a cross-platform industry standard DRM system that anyone can use to either protect their own material or view other people's work legally. However, with two companies busy trying to operate two differnet monopolys (Apple with it's market share in legal downloads through iTunes and Microsft with it's Windows platform) they are neglecting that video download is part of the future of entertainment. In my opinion, both companies have a responsibility to create the pathway for the future of DRM and video downloads. I don't know how each party feels, but they do have a common goal. If they worked together, they could achieve fantastic results for both Mac and PC users. Contraray to popular belief, Microsoft and Apple are no longer enemies. So why can't they work through this?