Digital Rights Management in the wild
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a novel concept that when Hollywood, a book company, an online record store sell you something, they can control exactly what you do with it. For example, when I download a song from Itunes, they have a small bit of computer code attached to that song that prevents me from burning the song onto more than seven cds or giving you a copy of the song.
Mostly this seems harmless. I am not a pirate, why should I care about a little protection built into what I buy. Things get a little tricky as you look closer. Apple uses one form of DRM on its music, MusicMatch uses another one with different terms. Finding out exactly what those terms are, or how many times you have left to burn a song is next to impossible. This is equivelent to having to remember what store you bought your shoes at to see if you could wear them to a dance, one store lets you wear them to ten dances, another store only eight. Now add in all the other variations on this, different rules for CDs you buy from different companies, different rules for recording different T.V. shows on your VCR or Tivo, and different rules for how and when you can play your DVDs.
Then there are digital books, which have some of the most restictive rules of all. I bought one online book that can’t be read if I am not connected to the internet, so that it can check home and see if I am legal reader. Wonderful, I am replacing this PC this summer, what do I do then? Here is a similar story from someone who upgraded software, then found he couldn’t read his very expensive ebook. His story has a happy ending, he got his story on one of the most popular blogs in the world and the publisher sent him a new copy. What do you think the odds are that when the same thing happens to you or me, or thousands of others that they will get a personal intervention from the publisher? DRM is a bad thing, and it will only get much, much worse. Why allow us to do anything we want with a cd or DVD when they can charge us for every time we play it? This is one of many reasons I urge people to think about supporting the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They aren’t perfect, but I am glad they are there and back them.
Via Boing Boing