The DRM switcheroo
p2p news / p2pnet: ZDNet’s David Berlind coined the term C.R.A.P.
Now, "One of the lesser discussed but equally troubling evils of digital rights management technology is what I call the ‘DRM switcheroo’," he says in Between the Lines.
"The DRM switcheroo is where the person or company sitting at the DRM controls over the content you’ve accumulated under one set of rules switches to a new set of rules. What, you don’t like the rules? Tough noogies. Because such DRM controls exist, content licensors and providers can pretty much decide to have their way with the content you think you have a right to use."
That’s the bottom line and Berlind gives an example from a reader in The Netherlands.
Then, "When readers write to me to tell me to stop whining about DRM because the people who buy DRM-enabled products like iPods know what they’re getting into, I routinely reply ‘No, they don’t and it’s not until they encounter a personal DRM trainwreck that they’ll realize the world they’ve actually helped to build’," he says
Most consumers, "aren’t aware of just how much control those working the levers of DRM infrastructures have, how the terms can quickly and almost arbitrarily change, and why there’s a risk of financial loss associated with products and services that involve DRM. When it comes to DRM, most people are like sheep being led to slaughter. Thus, We the sheeple."
Berlind is also keeping a list of what’s he’s dubbed DRM trainwrecks on del.icio.us.
And he hopes you’ll join him in, "building for the sake of compiling the mountain of evidence that people apparently need to see before they’ll be convinced of the pernicious nature of DRM".
Go to it.
Also See:
C.R.A.P. – Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
Between the Lines – Another real world example of why DRM is evil, May 30, 2006
