DRM

Here's a good ranty call to arms by Cory Doctorow regarding Digital Rights Management on digital media. The basic gist is that DRM sucks and people shouldn't be complacent and allow it to creep in. As my album is now on iTunes I guess I can weigh in on the subject. I personally can't imagine why anyone would want a restricted copy of my songs and I can't imagine buying stuff with DRM on it and not busting it wide open just for the security. I wouldn't buy a CD that could only play in one or two CD players so I don't know why I'd buy media that behaves the same way.

That being said, if it turns out that consumers are A-OK with DRM and I once again am just an outsider nerd who's fussy about things most normal people don't care about, then I guess that's okay too. Brad the music buyer will probably continue to resist, but Brad the musician probably can do nothing but benefit from this dumb imposed barrier.

Cory wants DRM dead and I don't blame him. Microsoft and Apple want their brands of DRM to succeed and I don't blame them either. I'm just interested to see what happens. If I had to bet, I'd bet on DRM becoming commonplace but with a huge underground that happily violates it.