Digital wrongs management

There's a growing concern among consumer groups about digital rights management, which allows publishers to control how their products are used -- after they're bought by consumers. The companies are scrambling over each other like a bunch of snakes to control what plays on hardware that you own.

Now Phillips has taken the DRM issue to a new low.

A patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said researchers of the Netherlands-based consumer electronics company has created a technology that could let broadcasters freeze up a channel during a commercial, so viewers would not be able to avoid it.

Some DRM schemas are so restrictive that the hardware will not play much of the content otherwise available. (MeTheSheeple confesses this was a small part of the reason he didn't get an iPod; the major reason, though, is that iPods are unreliable POSs.)