One of the most popular topics of geeks today is this little thing called Digital Rights Management or better known as DRM. In a nutshell DRM is a way for copyright owners to protect their content, which is good in theory. In practice its another story.
One of the best ways to explain what DRM does is to give an example; let’s go with the iTunes music store. When you purchase a song from iTunes what you download is encrypted in what Apple calls FairPlay which only allows you to play the song on a certain authenticated device. You have to authorize your computer with iTunes to be able to play the song on it.
If for some reason Apple were to totally remove iTunes for any reason, maybe they go bankrupt, the customer can no longer play the music they “purchased”. In reality when you pay for something that is DRMed the company who sold the song has the ability to revoke that privilege if they so choose.
A prime example of a company screwing over its customers with DRM is the google video store. When google video first came out one could buy various full length videos. The videos were encoded in a DRMed format, which means you could only view them on the google video site. The problem is that google decided to axe google video after they bought youtube. The videos people bought through their service would no longer be available. Google did offer a credit to google checkout for people’s inconvenience, but the problem was the video’s people bought are no longer any good. Even if I did not want the credit and only wanted the video I did not have a choice. Eventually google caved in and gave people’s money back as well as the google cart credit.
The video is still gone though. If it was not DRMed one could have saved the video to their computer and played it back at their leisure. Since it was protected by DRM you couldn’t do this without breaking the DMCA. For all legal purposes, the video is gone.
What can end users do?
The answer is quite simple, do not buy items protected by DRM. How to do that is the more complex answer. For music iTunes has recently started providing some of their songs DRM free, the problem is they are more expensive. They state its due to the higher quality, but it is still more expensive.
Take a look at the site DefectiveByDesign, they look to eliminate all DRM. They are a very good source to find legal content that is not protected by DRM.
Finally, speak with your money. If you really want to support DRM-free content, purchase it. By using money it will show the market that we do not want DRM infected content.
