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June 13, 2006
Sirius locks out the Blind
Sirius just added a new "feature" to their online listening system whereby users must now enter a "captcha" to listen online. (A captcha is a human-only-readable series of letters used to prevent automated logins.)
From our perspective, this totally prevents automatic tuning and unattended recording of radio shows. It's a bummer for our users.
From the perspective of Blind users (of which we have many), this is a disaster. Now there's no way for them to listen online at all.
I don't understand the business sense behind this. If you're going to have an online service at all, why make it more difficult (or impossible) for your users to use it. It's not as if automatic recordings of the online feeds are hurting sales of their new player-recorder, since they agreed to limit its distribution anyway.
The possibilities are:
A) They are a bunch of morons.
or
B) There's a good business reason for this I haven't thought of, and I'm the moron.
I'll go with A unless anyone submits a comment convincing me otherwise. Sirius employees are extra welcome to respond. Sirius management is extra-extra welcome to respond.
Posted by Bill Dettering at June 13, 2006 08:32 PM | Technorati Tags: sirius satellite radio xm captcha blind