Google’s Copy Protection Technology
TechDirt brings it on again, chewing on a release over at BusinessWeek :
“You can’t transfer the video to mobile devices. It doesn’t work on a Mac. And, you can only view the video when you’re online, as the copy protection obviously is calling home first (which, of course, opens up the potential of security holes). ”
“Google is basically going to say that they built the locks, but it’s up to the content provider to be evil with those locks.”
From BusinessWeek:
Google has developed its own copy protection technology that so far prevents content owners from moving their video downloads to a mobile playing device. In instances where the content provider adopts Google’s copy protection scheme, watching a video sold through Google will require users to be online so they can log on and view it via the company’s video player. CBS and the NBA are among the content owners adopting Google’s copy protections.
However, if a content owner posts unrestricted video on Google, the user could move the video onto pretty much any portable device. Charlie Rose is among those offering unprotected video.
In another distinction from iTunes, Google Video so far works only on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows-based PCs and not yet on Apple’s Macintosh computers.
By relying on its own proprietary copy-protection technology, Google threatens to compound the frustration that some consumers feel when they buy songs from one online source like the iTunes store, only to discover the music can’t be played on an incompatible gadget such as Creative Technologies’ Zen player.
Open for discussion.
