Draconian Rights Management…I think this is a more appropriate definition these days. DRM is the scourge of any computer enthusiast who expects to be able to do what he wants with his data when he wants to.
IT Enthusiasts commonly butt heads with DRM in the realms of music, movies and video games. Spore, for instance, shipped with DRM that consumers felt was so restrictive that many actually pirated the game BECAUSE of it. Many more who were on the fence–like myself–chose to simply not buy it. Whereas the paying consumer was required to activate the game upon installation, and was limited to being able to install the game only three times, the cracked versions had none of these limitations.
The protection on some discs has been known to be unreadable by certain CD/DVD drives, crash the computer, or, in Sony’s case, install dangerous rootkits. You’re also at the mercy of the DRM issuer, so if that issuer decides to stop maintaining the DRM servers, as Wal-Mart did (which they later rescinded), your music will cease to work.
Consumers are finally making some headway, with services like eMusic, Amazon, and even Apple offering high-quality DRM-free music. Apple charges more for it, which, at least from a business perspective, makes sense; it’s a better quality product. However, from a technical standpoint, it should cost less, since it is simpler and easier to manage (requiring no DRM servers or licensing fees).
There is a continual struggle between the studios who create DRM schemes and the hacking groups who remove the protection. DRM almost invariably loses. A good example of this is when Blu-Ray’s BD+ protection was introduced, with Richard Doherty claiming, “BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.’ Just eight MONTHS later, the protection had been circumvented by Slysoft.
When you consider all of these caveats of DRM-enabled media, can you really blame the consumer when they choose to download the free version that’s better quality?
