arstechnica.com — Defective by Design is sponsoring a "Day Against DRM" today in an effort to spread the word about the trials, tribulations, and general badness of digital rights management schemes. Folks in hazmat suits (yes, hazmat suits) have dispersed across the globe to spread the gospel of unencrypted media, some of them even spotted by an Ars staffer
Oct 3, 2006 View in Crawl 4
cstewOct 3, 2006
I support their cause and I'm glad that the Defective by Design people are doing it, but I think this is a war that they are not going to win.
addicted68098Oct 4, 2006
I don't think DRM is bad the biggest flaw of internet content is the fact that publishers have no control of the files. I think DRM should be a simple root kit (yay root kit!) that ID's all your songs if a song has many of the same ID it would be deleted.
colincornabyOct 4, 2006
Keep all your music in MP3 in iTunes. Then you can move it to whatever you want.I don't get the sync thing. One way or another, automatically or by hand, you're going to have to "sync" music in iTunes. My music collection is so large I can't manage it by hand anyway. I just let iTunes move everything I have over, that way I'm always carrying what I want with me. When I want to listen to music on another machine, I tell iTunes to play from my iTunes server. I haven't had a problem with this setup so far.
mikesolOct 4, 2006
I cannot believe the arrogance and ignorance being professed by people here. Half of the comments are "WHY ARE THEY PICKING ON APPLE".They're picking on Apple because Apple is the biggest seller of DRM'd music, that's why. You don't think DRM is wrong? What if i want to use a different MP3 player than an iPod with my legally purchased songs some point in the future?There are ten million valid arguments against DRM and no valid arguments for it. It cannot be implemented correctly (it is a cryptographic impossibility to do so). It will never stop piracy.All DRM will ever do is hurt legitimate customers. These people, myself included, are fighting for your rights. The f**king least you could do is learn that you have those rights in the first place.
r3zonanceOct 4, 2006
"What if i decide i want a different brand mp3 player, i should just buy new music? since my itunes music wont let me play it on a non apple player?"Well you knew that before you bought the music from iTunes Store, and if you say otherwise you are just lying, cos everyone has been bleating about it right from the start.
r3zonanceOct 4, 2006
"You don't think DRM is wrong? What if i want to use a different MP3 player than an iPod with my legally purchased songs some point in the future?"Everyone knows you have to purchase the music again, but still they buy it, so it's a bit of a moot point really."There are ten million valid arguments against DRM and no valid arguments for it. It cannot be implemented correctly (it is a cryptographic impossibility to do so). It will never stop piracy."The valid argument for DRM is to HELP protect the rights of the copyright holder. If I sell music I spent ages writing I wouldn't want people ripping it off really easily without paying me for it."All DRM will ever do is hurt legitimate customers. These people, myself included, are fighting for your rights. The f**king least you could do is learn that you have those rights in the first place."I'm a legitimate customer and I haven't been hurt by DRM yet. And have been buying music off iTMS since it opened in the UK.Those legitimate customers know what they are buying into when they purchase music from iTMS, so in the end they only have themselves to blame. I'm happy with it the way it is.
backwards2Oct 4, 2006
This isn't going to get much traction among consumers, because what consumers will be comparing against is non-computer forms of media.For example, consider audio books from Audible.com. They have DRM. Let's compare an Audible.com book to a physical book purchased from the local B&N.One of the evils of DRM is that if I lose my copy, I'm screwed. But the same thing happens if I lose my physical book. B&N isn't going to give me another copy. (And actually, Audible.com *will* let me download again...they keep track of your purchases and you can download them at will). And I can easily make backup copies of the audio book, to lessen the chance of losing it.Another evil of DRM: hard to make copies. Well, it's also hard to make copies of the physical book. Copies of short passages are easy with a photocopier and a stack of coins, but copies of short sections of the audio book are easy, too, with a blank CD-R. Copying the whole audio book that way is hard, because it will take several discs, but copying a whole physical book at the photocopier is also a pain.Another evil of DRM: hard to share with friends. With the physical book, I can loan it to friends. But wait--I can loan the audiobook to friends. They just plug their iPod into my computer, and I load the book onto it. And, unlike the physical book, I've still got it, too.The DRM does limit me to using the Audible book on authorized computers (my home desktop, my work desktop, my laptop...I don't know what the limit is because I ran out of computers before hitting it), and on as many iPods as I want. The physical book I can use anywhere I happen to have the book. So, here is one thing where the DRM'ed Audio.com book loses to the physical book. I can't use it on random other computers--just mine. But when I'm not at home, I'm most likely going to be using an iPod, not a computer, for my audio books, so when I copy the book to an iPod, it is basically just like the physical book as far as where I can use it (anywhere I bring it).From a consumer point of view, the audio book, compared to the physical book, comes out about the same--slightly less convenient in some ways, and more convenient in others. So, if the consumer accepts the limitations of physical books, they are not going to see anything wrong with audio books having similar limitations. Nothing apparent to the consumer would lead consumers to expect sane people to dress up in funny suits and treat DRM'ed media as if it were hazardous waste. The net result is that the consumers will write off these protesters as just another kook group.