Creative, a manufacturer of digital entertainment products, recently released firmware upgrades for two of its MP3 players that disable the players’ FM radio recording capability. This type of “upgrade” (some users might dispute the term) illustrates the importance of clearly disclosing the impact of DRM both at the time of purchase and at other key points subsequent to purchase. Transparency/disclosure was one of the core areas CDT discussed in its recent paper outlining consumer metrics for DRM.

Clearly, a consumer considering buying a device should be notified before purchase if there is a possibility that some of the device’s capabilities could be revoked after purchase. And that seems like too significant a consideration to bury in fine print. Similarly, prominent notice seems warranted at the time of the upgrade, with enough information to enable the user to make an informed choice about whether to accept the upgrade.

We’re not really in a position to evaluate the quality of Creative’s disclosures. Creative’s website features a prominent notice about the disabling of FM recording — but since we don’t own one of the players, we don’t know what was disclosed at purchase and when or how the website disclosure was pushed out to device users. We’ve also seen reports that users who choose to upgrade can later reverse that choice, thus regaining the ability to record FM (but losing benefits of the upgraded firmware, apparently including the ability to support more DRM platforms). Giving users an ongoing choice would certainly be better than locking them in to the new firmware with its significant tradeoffs, assuming that retaining the old firmware is a viable option, and that the tradeoffs are explained.

We can’t be sure what motivated Creative in this instance, though the music industry’s efforts to combat what it views as excessive copying capability in the satellite and digital radio contexts suggest a likely source of pressure. In any event, the big-picture lesson here is that DRM — and associated updates — can have a significant, and perhaps surprising impact on users, making transparency essential.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Digital Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.