Microsoft DRM: A Blunt Knife

What a blunt knife Microsoft’s DRM is. We don’t know if you’ve noticed before, but some time in the last, Microsoft made change to their Media Player, stopping screen grabs of videos that are playing.

Clearly Microsoft thought this would be something that would appeal to content owners in fear of their work being taken without payment - even if it was only a single frame of it.

What Microsoft forgot in their haste to add this feature, is that individuals might be playing back video that they have created themselves, not a media company.

My using this blunt knife approach, Microsoft has created software that has no discretion between right and ‘wrong’ captures.

The long and the short of this is that I’ve been unable to grab a frame of my own video, stopping me from using it to illustrate a column.

Ho Hum … off to another media player for me. Something that will be happening all the more often to providers of software apps that smash DRM into all occasions.