Incompatible DRM
Most every player device works at every one of these “stores” and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter where you got them, in a single folder or “jukebox” on your computer. But not the iPod. Most agree it is the best quality player on the market even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars. The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel. – Hilary Rosen
So, the solution to proprietary DRM is for all the DRM companies to get together and make their system interoperable?
The “6th General Assembly of the Digital Media Project” recently released a set of documents “providing an Interoperable DRM Platform”. I’ve written before about the self-contradictory nature of their goal A Perfectly Compatible Form of Incompatibility. Now we get to see how they plan to achieve the goal. And I have to say, the documents are a real piece of work. – Edward Felten
But isn’t the more obvious solution just to do away with DRM entirely? I have yet to buy a single track from an online music store that uses one of these schemes, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
