Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Another reason DRM is a bad idea


This quick tidbit, from TechDirt, outlines yet another reason DRM, in it's current incarnation(s) is a bad idea.

Besides locking people into hardware (iTunes/iPod) and making it difficult to USE equipment you own (try moving a DRM's .WMA file to your MP3 player sometime), what if the store that 'validates' your DRM files goes away?

And Coke ain't no little company. It's just dropping this 'particular' business.

  • Latest Entertainment Digital Strategy: Incidental Obsolescence

  • from the hmmmmmmm dept

  • One of the Guardian blogs has a post involving the demise of the MyCokeMusic download store, at one time the biggest download store in Europe. It raises an interesting question, though not one the post actually hits on -- what happens for consumers when a seller of DRMed media files shuts down? With things like cassettes, LPs or CDs, their obsolence can really be determined only by a lack of available playback equipment. But for locked-down digital files, particularly those using a mechanism that has to go out and validate a license from a content provider or another authority, the closure of such an entity could render files unplayable. One of the downsides of current DRM implementations is a lack of interoperability. It's hard to imagine that those interoperability problems won't get worse, particularly as some of the music download sites that have popped up go out of business. Of course, with so much of modern entertainment strategy revolving around getting consumers to pay for the same content multiple times, it's hard to see Big Content really caring.
Check out the www.techdirt.com guys for stuff like this daily. VERY insightful group (if you don't mind a little vinegar with your news and opinions).

The lesson here? Don't buy DRM'd media, period.

How? Buy the CD (or DVD) and rip it. At least, then, you have control over your digital file and you've (legally) obtained your media.

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An excellent read from an ex-evangelical.

  As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer t...