DRM: Dumb Ridiculous Menace

By now we are all familiar with how frustrating and utterly annoying Digital Rights Management is. In a pitifully desperate attempt to retain some control over the free trade and ownership of music files, the powers that be created a technology that effectively hinders the use of their product. Way to go guys, that’s a great approach. Force upon us an actual DETERRENT to using your service. That’s definitely going to dissuade us from getting our music for free with no restrictions at the click of a button. I understand that those are hard, maybe impossible alternatives to compete with, but don’t take a frickin step in the WRONG DIRECTION! Oh wait, DRM is the strategy you employed after realizing that suing 12 year old girls for hundreds of thousands of dollars wasn’t really solving the problem of your unprecedented decline in sales. Good choice using oppressive scare tactics and litigation to force your consumers into buying from you. Riiiiiight. Another brilliant idea.

And speaking of that decline in CD sales, remember back in the day when you bought a CD how you could play it on any CD player you wanted to? Now if I pay to download an album I also have to download the “player” from that site, and my playback of the music I just bought is restricted to that device. That’s like having to carry around 10 separate CD players: one for Sam Goody, another for Tower Records, and an individual player for every independent CD store I happen to buy an album from. And their brilliant solution to the problem: iTunes starts selling selected DRM free downloads for MORE MONEY!?!? Why would I pay more money for something I can get for free and that should go without saying in the first place? I’m sorry, but if you want me to actually pay for my music, you are going to have to make it at least equally as easy to use it once I do.