DRM's Ugly Head Rears Again

Image by GregoryH via Flickr

Average people just don't seem to learn when DRM shows how awful it can be. Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's music services were cancelled and their authorization servers were planned to be taken off-line. The suggested workaround? Burn the tracks to CD and rip them to a non-DRM format, losing cash, time, and a serious amount of fidelity in the process.

The biggest complaint I hear about moving to Gnome right now is that the person's iPod and previous iTunes purchases won't work. The iPod's DMCA-assured secret hasing and iTune's limit on moving older music purchases share a common trait: that's DRM locking you in. But that's all old news, isn't it?

The new news is not about music: it's about e-books. Same old nasty tasting poison -- different wrapper. Amazon controls how long you can read your Kindle books for. The details of the case in the link above aren't important. The banned customer may have abused a policy or he may not have. The result is the same: he not only loses his right to the returned books, but to all the books he legally purchased and didn't return. The message from Amazon is clear.

"All your book are belong to us." You don't own the books your bought, and Amazon can take them away time they are dissatisfied with you. You have no recourse.

Do yourself and the world a favor. Support open formats. Refuse to buy products which contain DRM. Let the vendors know they lost your sale. Use the non-DRMed products legally and within fair use guidelines.

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