Standardista Kyd

For people who don’t know,  DRM is a blanket term for electronic measures designed to stop you enjoying your movies and music. It stands for “Digital Rights Management,” although “Digital Restrictions Management” is a more accurate description. So far, the only valid use for it is imposing and enforcing frivolous restrictions over what you can do with a song or movie; For instance “Only let this song play twice,” or “Only play on an iPod.”

In theory, DRM is a good idea. If you’ve got a top secret document, or are trying to organise a surprise birthday party, you can lock away emails and voice conversations. The key to this whole scheme is “trust” — you can specify a number of people whom you trust with the birthday preparations. Having a rights management system on the other hands means that the person imposing the rights doesn’t trust the person receiving the content. Imagine if your friend gave you a new top-secret demo of their band’s newest song, but wouldn’t leave the room “just in case” you tried to make a copy of it. That’s the main driving force behind DRM.

I’ve only ever seen MSDRM used twice: First on the Telstra Bigpond music download service (Which is a rip-off, and a joke,) and second on the website belonging to Muse. I would have happily forked over a couple of dollars to download an MP3 file that would sit right in my collection.

Unfortunately there’s no way I’m going to to download a song from a company that tells me I have to reboot my computer every time I want to listen to it. The reasoning behind that last statement is that the download would only work in one piece of software, that only runs on the very expensive Microsoft Windows platform. Sure I’ve got all the required software, but I use Linux for day-to-day work — including listening to music — and would have to reboot into Windowd to listen to this one track.

Why would anyone want to go through all that hassle just to listen to one song in their collection? There’s absolutely no way I want some foreign company telling me that I can only burn this song onto two CDs, or play it on two computers, for the rest of time. It’s silly, plain and simple.

For every ‘net savvy artist, CEO, or content producer, there’s about five hundred technological Neanderthals that want to regulate how many squares of toilet paper you’re allowed to use per flush. Companies might be trying to update their business models, but the major players (Sony, Microsoft, Apple to name a few,) are all pushing these restrictive technologies on consumers, expecting people to accept them.

For the most part, people do.

Personally, I refuse to buy a CD with “Copy Control” technology on it, because aside the fact you can’t technically call it a “CD,” I don’t like the idea of it not being able to be read in my computer, or installing dangerous software behind my back. My Windows installation is unstable enough as it is, without adding more software that you can’t get rid of; I’m sure you’re sick of your Windows system crashing too.

I’m sure Sony, or Mushroom won’t notice one little fish in the sea not consuming their DRM branded fish food, but at least I don’t have to put up with nonsense when I put my headphones on. I urge you to do the same too: If you see the copy controlled logo on a CD, just don’t buy it. If it’s going to mess with you, you’re better off without it. Aditionally, try to steer clear of the cellophane-coated online music stores with ribbons all over: iTunes, Bigpond, Yahoo… They’re not worth the hassles.

Personally, I’d prefer to go up against the malware on Gnutella than the malware included on some of these copy protected discs. There are plenty of bands out there that are against DRM too, but ultimately they have no say in the matter: It’s all down to the record labels who won’t get the hint until we all do something about it collectively.

Whatever your current position, I urge you to consider what I’m saying and make up your own mind.