Is DRM even worth getting worked up about anymore?
by Joey Manley
DRM, “digital rights management,” is that layer of annoyance between you and a piece of digital content you’ve purchased, that keeps you from copying it to another computer or device that you happen to own, or (more to the point, from the point of view of DRM proponents) sharing it with your friends. The only DRM-heavy marketplace that has worked at all has been iTunes, and iTunes’ success is tremendous, but Steve Jobs, of all people, has gone on record with an anti-DRM position.
That the comic book companies seem (maybe) to be gearing up for digital sales of their periodicals at this particular historical moment is, well, interesting for them. Slave Labor and a number of other smallish publishers have happily jumped in the waters without wearing any DRM “protection.” I doubt, though, that the big companies, the ones who have the ability to reach hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of customers with digital downloads, will be able to avoid using DRM. It’s one of those things that, when you’re standing in a very particular context (that of owning valuable content) is tempting to you, though other people can see, with full clarity, how stupid it would be for you to yield to the temptation. Like that scene in Pan’s Labyrinth where she eats the fruit on the table. You know what I mean.
Here’s blogger Mark Shuttleworth with a sort of especially vigorous expression of the currently orthodox position on DRM, expressed as a warning to companies using it:
Someone will find a business model that doesn’t depend on the old way of thinking, and if it is not you, then they will eat you alive. You will probably sue them, but this will be nothing but a defensive action as the industry reforms around their new business model, without you. And by the industry I don’t mean your competitors – they will likely be in the same hole – but your suppliers and your customers. The distributors of content are the ones at risk here, not the creators or the consumers.
