Editor's Note:  In the digital world, the rights of the citizen are often cast aside in favor of the almighty buck. As consumers, we not only have the power to fight back, we have an obligation to ourselves and to each other to do so. The power is not only in our united voice, but is also in our wallets. Do you believe that it's time for us to speak out?

Bad Attitude

I have to admit, I went into the whole Blu-ray issue with an attitude. Among other things, it's a massive conspiracy to quash my Inner Tightwad.

I'm cheap. I'm not an early adopter. I like my stuff to work the first time. I prefer function to style. And I don't like to pay for stuff that can be had for free.

That's why I chose Linux as my target operating system along with MythTV (or Freevo—I haven't decided yet.)

As you recall, my software decision matrix:

In light of Digital Rights Management (DRM), however, I need to consider another issue: my conscience.

Why on Earth would I want to pay perfectly good money for an operating system like Windows Vista Home Premium,

with poor real-time performance, when I can get Linux for free with adequate real-time performance?

But first, why does this all work (or not work, depending on your point of view)?

Conspiracy

Gratuitous_Advice_1: Become rich and buy a media PC. Miss out on all the great conspiracy theories. Live longer.

As Christy aptly points out in her article on DRM, they really are out to get us. Normally I’d just call them all names like "greedy capitalist pigs” or “money grubbers,” except that those things mostly describe me, too. This is more insidious. They want control; they have money and do a lot of talking to lawmakers about the ‘tubes.

They don't get that the whole reason I wait to buy into new technology is that I prefer other people to be stuck with BetaMaxes or boxes of OS/2 in their garage. Not that I would ever have such things in my garage, of course.

So I've been waiting for the final say in the Blu-ray v. HD-DVD battle, and it's looking good for Blu-ray, probably because they have a cooler name. But just as it looks like the prices are going to come down a little on volume, I learn that I have to fork money out for software to get movies to play on my PC. This is enough to genuinely annoy a tightwad like me.

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