Scott Granneman on DRM

Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus: The big DRM mistake

"Digital Rights Managements hurts paying customers, destroys Fair Use rights, renders customers' investments worthless, and can always be defeated. Why are consumers and publishers being forced to use DRM?"

I use Apple's iTunes service, and considering they've now sold over 1 BILLION songs, I'm far from being alone in that regard. I don't like DRM either, but I'm able to do everything I want with the songs I've bought. DRM-free songs would be nice but I'm not sure they're worth more to me, I think a dollar a song is already pushing it. Right now I am more interested in getting higher bit rate (better quality) songs.

Most of the other DRM schemes I've seen make "purchasing" content more trouble than its worth, as Scott points out.

Written on March 2, 2006