Stupid CBC

My sister sent a link to Inside the CBC, apparently CBC's blog, which I didn't even know existed. Turns out they want to put DRM on their video clips here. First off, why are they worried about people pirating their little video snippets? Some would consider it promotion. I think before they start worrying about piracy they have to get people who want to watch their stuff first.

They also want opinions on whether DRM would be okay on full episodes of shows. Instead of giving you just my opinion, I'll give you samples of the comments left so far. They show that the public, or at least those that are inclined to leave comments on CBC's blog, are far more educated about DRM than I would have expected:

angrytrousers says: "All it seems to accomplish is to make the experience more annoying for Joe Consumer..."

From William Denton: "CBC should use open formats, without DRM, that anyone on any platform can use."

Dwight Williams: "I’ve considered myself lucky to have narrowly avoided such “guilt presumed from the moment of legit purchase/download” bullets messing up my computer gear so far."

Evan Young has an excellent suggestion: "A more progressive and community supportive stance would be to license your material under a Creative Commons license so that CBC fans like myself could share and promote your material freely but CBC would retain the right to prevent commercial use and disallow modification of it’s content."

Luke is the sole supporter (so far), and even he's lukewarm about it: "I’m not a fan of DRM generally, but if it would allow full shows to be made available online…"

The problem CBC is having isn't with piracy, it's with getting people to watch their damn shows. Why are they spending our tax money on a solution that will make it more difficult for people to see their shows, and will do nothing to stop piracy?