40 Days #7: Make DRM work for the people, not against them

Another day, another story about the "broken" DRM in the Xbox Live Marketplace. Sadly, these days I can actually relate. My launch 360 died just before Christmas last year (Mass Effect did it in), and after a few weeks I got an apparently pretty old refurb. That of course meant that all my downloaded content - which was tied to the original, now dead console - was only accessible while my account was signed into Xbox Live.

There are really two issues that people encounter when this happens. First, you can't use the content when you are offline. I personally don't really care about this scenario, since apart from actual service outages (like the month or so after Christmas), I am usually signed into the service all the time anyway. The second problem, which unfortunately affects our household, is that other gamer accounts on the console can't use the content on their own. So for example, Monica can't play the downloaded Arcade games while signed in under her account. That's annoying.

Now, I understand the need for the protection, since without it people would be trading memory units and hard drives and getting free games left and right. I also agree with tying the content to the console and not the hard drive. In the latter case it would again either let anybody at all play the games, or would have to be restricted to the purchasing account, which is what happens now when your console is replaced. Neither is practical.

The real problem is not so much the DRM, but the fact that there is no easy way to get these post-replacement restrictions fixed. While there are whispered stories of Microsoft support being able to go into the back-end database and change the console ID for the individual purchased items to reflect the new console, this isn't actively being offered by support, and doesn't seem to be widespread. Ironically, if this were true, most people wouldn't have much reason to complain about the DRM. As to why this seemingly isn't possible, who knows, since it seems to be the "simplest" solution at this time.

Of course, the actual shocker here is the fact that this problem shouldn't even exist in the first place. No, I am not going to advocate banishing DRM here. I will just point out that Microsoft can - and already does - handle DRM pretty well for at least one other product: the Zune.

Just like its PlaysForSure predecessors, the Zune world (software, players, and  marketplace) can work with two types of DRM: one-time purchases, and ongoing subscriptions. In both cases, the Zune software can support several registered computers and devices, and let the user manage all these locations themselves.

Taking a cue from how the Zune DRM works, here is how the Xbox 360 should handle Marketplace content:

• Continue to tie the purchase to the console ID and gamer account.
• Allow 2-3 consoles to be registered under a single person's gamer account, to allow for multi-console households like mine.
• Allow the user to authorize and de-authorize these consoles both from the dashboard and through Xbox.com.
• Let support replace authorizations from dead to replacement consoles as a courtesy part of the repair process.
• While a console is authorized, any gamertag can sign in and use the content, even offline.
• Each console must periodically be re-authorized, for example monthly or so, probably with a random offset of a few days to either side.
• Re-authorization can happen automatically in the background when the primary account is signed in (the console will start trying to re-authorize some time before it is needed, whenever the primary gamertag signs in). If this does not happen in time, a message would be presented, warning that downloaded content will not be available unless the primary account signs in.

These changes should make the system almost completely transparent to gamers, and still retain a level of protection for developers and publishers. Sure, there is a bit of leeway for a group of friends to chip in, register a console or two under the same account, and later take them to different homes. However, you can already do something similar today where two consoles can "share" Arcade games - in fact, I use this at home so that Monica and I can play against each other on our two consoles. I will first download the game on the "primary" console, where she can then always sign in on her own, while I play on the second system, where I have re-downloaded the game again.

This may sound like piracy, but I really don't plan to buy two copies of a $10 downloadable game for the same household, especially since the second copy would hardly ever get used. I'd rather spend the points to buy another piece of content. Also, this is exactly how the Zune software works now: I have a Zune Pass subscription, and both Monica and I sync our Zunes to this one account. Given that this same music library can also be accessed by a number of networked Xbox consoles, it seems fair that sharing within a household should be fair game.

At any rate, fears of sharing consoles under a paying gamertag could be alleviated to a certain extent by adding that periodic - but randomized - re-authorization process, which would make it cumbersome for most people to get the paying account to sign into the shared consoles on a recurring basis. Those types of people - the ones who will try really hard to circumvent the system - will eventually succeed anyway, so the DRM system just needs to deter the majority of the piracy situations.