drm

"It's been 18 months since O'Reilly, the world's largest publisher of tech books, stopped using DRM on its ebooks. In the intervening time, O'Reilly's ebook sales have increased by 104 percent. Now, when you talk about ebooks and DRM, there's always someone who'll say, "But what about [textbooks|technical books|RPG manuals]? Their target audience is so wired and online, why wouldn't they just copy the books without paying? They've all got the technical know-how."

So much for that theory."

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/22/oreilly-drops-ebook.html

"It’s a nightmare scenario: Imagine coming into the office and not being able to access any of your organization’s vital documents. That scenario became reality today for an untold number of Microsoft Office 2003 customers who use Microsoft’s Rights Management Service (RMS), a technology for controlling access to documents."

http://technologizer.com/2009/12/11/office-2003-rights-management-bug-lo...

To prevent movie goers from sneaking in recording equipment, movie theaters nowadays have implemented all sorts of security measures. Employees are equipped with night-vision goggles so they can closely monitor the public and several theaters have metal detectors installed.

Earlier this year Amazon "reclaimed" copies of 1984 and Animal House people had bought for their Kindles.  In another example of business hypocracy, on one had they want consumers to obey laws about physical property with digital goods (artificially limitted supply, "stealing," "piracy," etc), on the other they don't want to do that themselves - the physical analogy to this would have been breaking into all of their customer's homes, finding the books they'd just bought, and taking them and leaving IOU's in their place...

Interesting take on DRM, but ultimately wrong-headed - why take the run from the opportunities brought by unlimited supply and try to turn back the clock with artificial limits?  "His answer is that such freely-copiable goods breaks the basic business model of human commerce by making goods nonrivalrous."  So what - figure out a new business model.  The only ones interested in preserving this are the middlemen who are invested in the system.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/goodbye-drm-hello-steala...

More reasons for me to be reluctant to "buying" drm "protected" content - things you thought you purchased can be remotely deleted at any time, and if the store you bought it from goes out of business, you're SOL.