Saturday, December 13, 2014

Coffee's equivalent of DRM?

DRM is becoming more and more common in today's world. It was previously most prominently seen in digital entertainment such as movies and video games. However, these days even our coffee makers get DRM equivalent protection installed in them. As ludicrous as this may sound, this is precisely what the Keurig 2.0 has done to force its customers to purchase their coffee pods. However, as all forms DRMs usually are, the coffee maker's protection system was broken.

http://blog.lifars.com/2014/12/13/keurig-2-0-hacked-to-make-unauthorized-coffee/

This shows an increasingly disturbing trend in the economy, where instead of trying to fix problems with their business models. The companies trying to prevent a few from circumventing their systems, this has the tendency of making the user experience worse for the larger portion of their users. Instead of adapting better marketing techniques, the companies try to force users into the broken system.

In a way this mirror the developments of how net neutrality is currently experiencing similar issues. Whether it is using DRM or providing fast lanes, these solutions provide only temporary fixes for larger problems.

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