I am very angry today at Sony. My son’s PS3 packed up but not before we’d the sense to run a full backup and keep all our photos, home videos, and the all important game data saves. Took the machine to the store to be fixed and they very kindly replaced it with a brand new one. Here is where I get angry. When we tried to restore our data onto the new machine … no way jose. Why the hell not? They’re my photos. They’re my sons own videos he shot on our video camera. All the music was scanned from CD’s we own ‘cos we’re big on supporting artists and BUY MUSIC. Worst of all, all the game data is gone which means we’re at square one with every single damn game.

Perhaps this inability to restore our data to the new machine is a Digital Rights Management setting to prevent people from copying from one machine to another. However when all is above board, as in our case, it’s really really annoying. I feel as angry now as I did when my PC died a few years back and tried to copy the music I bought from iTunes back onto my new PC .. again no way jose. Eventually when the iPod died so did all my music purchaces. Might explain why I’m now an avid fan of Creative.

So all the above, while technically possible, has been prevented by the manafacturer using DRM to deliberately control how a user uses their product.

This incident with the PS3 and the issue of control made me think back to many negative comments made at the IBI conference on digital radio. Like Apple and the music industry in general before it, it appears to me that existing broadcasters are trying to protect their investments by exerting some control on the market by putting DAB down. To be fair, were I in their position I’d try to do the same. But will it work? I believe if there is something good out there that people want … they’ll find a way of getting it - legal or otherwise. I feel the comparative freedom digital radio gives a listener will make it a winner and no-one can control that.

As for the PS3 - bugger it. Sending it back tomorrow for a Wii.

My apologies for the rant. Feel free to comment as you see fit. Things are a bit more relaxed on this site!