DRM – Evil or Genius?
Highly recommended reading report. Dave Slusher of the Evil Genius Chronicles has a very insightful post on issues surrounding DRM, Digital Rights Management. For those unfamiliar, the promise of DRM for publishers is prohibiting illegal use of their digital files. CDs, ebooks, audio books… DRM is everywhere. It may seem logical on the surface, but Dave digs a little deeper…
Be it an ebook from Gemstar, a song from iTunes, a movie from whatever service or any digital good with DRM, it will almost certainly work at the moment you purchased it. The hardware you have matches that expected, your OS runs the program that enforces the rights, any servers necessary to verify credentials are up and running. It will work at that instant, and it will almost certainly work tomorrow and will probably work in six months. Will it work in a year? Maybe, maybe not. Will it work in ten years? Almost certainly not.
All the files you’ll find here on Podiobooks.com are and will remain DRM free, if for no other reason than this: we want you to be able to enjoy and share the files forever, and to be able to share them with others. Our model for success doesn’t not assume everyone downloading and sharing files are criminals, nor are we hanging our hats on single-unit sales of anything. Share… and enjoy!
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
You guys rock!
DRM can of course be helpful for some parts of the industry, but most times it gets abused, and indeed normal customers get seen as criminals.
I am already spreading the words of this site, and I hope that you guys will grow to great heights.
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Thanks, MadJo. Never have been a big fan of DRM, for many of the reasons Dave outlines above and more. But regardless, I appreciate your spreading the word of what we’re doing over here.
E.