Sony still don’t get it

Sony make some extremely desirable gadgets that look nice, but that’s about as far as it goes. Their approach to the whole question of the content that makes the gadgets useful seems to be reminiscent of an anxious hostess who hovers behind you with a baseball bat during a dinner party, in case you try to pinch one of the spoons.

Take the NetJuke hifi that’s due to be launched soon. You’ve got to have a Vaio PC in order to stream music to it, and if you want to download anything, you’re tied into using a device that uses a Memory Stick (i.e. a Sony device) or a NetMD minidisc player (i.e. a Sony device). Then there’s the LIBRIe e-book that’s just been launched. Fantastic from a gadget point of view - as far as I’m aware it’s the first device to use one of the new e-ink screens - but if you were planning on building up a library of digital books, forget it. The content disappears in a puff of MagicGate DRM electronic smoke after two months.

In theory, Sony should be well-placed enough to dictate what goes on in the consumer electronic market. They’ve got a history of making innovative and highly-desirable hardware, and they’ve got a huge library of content thanks to Sony Music. But it seems that the mindset in charge is the ‘customers are thieving gits’ approach of the music business rather than that of the hardware people.

So here’s my voice crying in the wilderness, shouting in the general direction of Sony. I bought one of your Minidisc players when they were really, really new, and I loved it. I ripped huge numbers of my CDs onto Minidiscs so I could carry them around with me, and believe me, it took ages. But I’m not going to buy another one of your personal audio products until they can play any and all of the library of MP3 tracks that I’ve got, without needing to transfer them onto a Memory Stick or having them disappear into a haze of DRM after an arbitrary period of time. They’re mine. I paid for them and I’ll play them in the format of my choice on the hardware of my choice at the time of my choice - so anyone who tries to get in the way of that with crippled products is not going to get a share of my gadget budget.

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