I can't seem to find this information anywhere, cite please.
You're talking to Vin, he doesn't get sources for his information just spews whatever comes to his head first.
The problem is that my sources are mostly in Dutch. Given the fact that nobody here speaks it I have to look up English articles wich may not fully (if at all) represent the Dutch article.
I'm going to go ahead and guess the article doesn't exist or was mistranslated from x language to dutch to begin with, since there still is no source for me to check, sorry! D:
What is DRM?
DRM, so called Digital Rights Management for propaganda's sake, is a umbrella term for encrypted data. In order to compute encrypted data it must be decrypted with the encryption key. The problem is "who owns the key?" If it's you than you are in charge, if someone else owns it than they are in charge of that data.
Software company's can use encryption for games, music and other stuff. Like Valve does with Steam this technique can be used for copyprotection. Nothing wrong with that... or is it?
Like I said, it's a tradeoff. You are trading ownership for wider access.
Apple has DRM built into iTunes. Copyprotecting you say? Well what if your iPod is broken, say you accidently dropped it, and you want to buy a better, cheaper Samsung music player? Forget it. You have to buy a new iPod that can store the decryption keys to play all the music you bought through iTunes.
There are perfectly legal ways to get around that.Lock in product
In Windows Vista everything is encrypted. What if you want to switch from MS Office to another office suit, like StarOffice? All the so called 'protected' word documents can not be read.
A valid and plausible argument. I don't have a copy of vista, so I don't know. However, even my MSword has the option to save as .rtf or .txt to maximize compatability.
Protected from what?
Protected from ownership. Everyting DRM you buy is owned by the company, used whenever the company likes it, blocked from you whenever a company thinks they don't want to hand you over the key.
Protected from bankruptcy. Remember, it's a tradeoff, one that greatly benefits you and I: More music, faster, CD quality, low price. And it's legal.
"Good for the industry"
Only good for the large company's. Smaller companys will get crushed. No competition and no future for small record labels.
Smaller labels don't suffer from as much piracy as larger labels do. Small labels will continue to exist and pick up new artists. Why? Because major labels don't go to local shows or meet with small potato bands. They just wait and prey on successful bands when their contract expires for their small label. Anyone else is just a fake groomed to be a star by the mainstream media.
"Ah whatever! I'll be using Microsoft products for ever and as long as it works I don't see the problem"
Does this ends with Word documents and music? What if everything on the internet will be getting encrypted and the United States government will own all the keys to internet data they ship around? The ultimate propaganda machine! Iraq you say? Nah it's peacefull there. Area51? Nah that doesn't exist.
Microsoft is the great satan! You're not going to kill free speech simply by making people go through
an extra step to get their music. As Adolph said, the people are more prone to believe a big lie than a small one... I can't see a smaller lie than what the R stands for in DRM.
Digital Restriction Management restricts the end user from his own system. You pay for things that you can't own. Large company's are in charge of your pc. Windows Vista: you harddisk in encrypted... Not you but Microsoft is in control of your pc!
No, it doesn't restrict you from your own system. You still have access to all of
your stuff. You pay for a
license to the music. THIS IS A FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPT OF DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION. Unless you go to a store and buy a physical box labeled as the product you want, there is no possible way the company can make it economically feasible to distribute online.
Think of it this way, when they sell you unprotected digital music, they are essentially selling you a mold. You could make as many copies as you want with that mold, but you have to go through a little bit of work. Why on earth would a product maker sell the molds to their products? Wouldn't they rather sell just the finished product so that their design is protected and they get more sales?
In a digital world, the only way to sell just the product is to switch to DRM and sell licenses.
Remember, your experiences aren't defined by what you can take with you to the grave, but by what you did in life.
