At Coolfer, Damian Kulash (of OK Go) presents the musician’s case against DRM: The DRM Hullabaloo
DRM just flat out sucks. Its most obvious problem is that it doesn’t work. No matter how sophisticated the particular software, it only takes one person to break it, once, and the music that was ‘protected’ by the DRM is free to roam the vast expanses of the P2P networks. It’s the most ridiculous house-of-cards model imaginable: one single breech and the whole system implodes. As if to underscore the superlative absurdity of their goal, the lightbulb-heads also managed to cook up software that is comically easy to break. Way to go, guys.
Beyond the guaranteed functional failure, DRM is bad for everyone involved.
At Slate, Adam Penenberg notes that the only winner in DRM is the companies locking-in consumers to certain DRM schemes: Digital Rights Mismanagement: How Apple, Microsoft, and Sony cash in on piracy prevention
Companies like Apple claim that digital rights management—”digital restrictions management” to critics—is a tool to dampen the threat of piracy, which the record industry claims has cost it billions in revenues. But DRM also locks consumers into using their technologies over those of competitors. The term “FairPlay” is a classic example of technological doublespeak. Since Apple sells about 80 percent of legal music downloads in the United States, FairPlay effectively stunts competition and consumer choice.
Sony BMG’s use of spyware/DRM on new CD releases is a security and PR problem. Ed Felten and Alex Halderman discuss the security problems at Freedom to Tinker. Coolfer discusses the PR problem. BoingBoing has a summary timeline that shows how quickly information and bad publicity spread on the internets.
