Monday, January 08, 2007

I hate DRM so much . . .

. . . and today's news (CNN: "Studios sign off on movie downloads") doesn't make me feel any better.

If I buy a song or a movie or an audiobook, it's MINE. I should be allowed to do anything I want with it. In particular, I should DEFINITELY be allowed to put it on my cell phone rather than my iPod. In fact, I should definitely be allowed to put it on BOTH of them. Additionally, when I upgrade my phone or when the DVD I just burned dies, I should be allowed to copy it AGAIN onto my media; I should NOT be locked out and forced to buy a new copy!

I know this is a bigger issue, and on the bigger discussion I'm convinced that copyright/IP laws do much more harm than good. However, even without that, if I'm not distributing my purchsed media to someone else, I should be allowed to do anything I want with it.

(on a related note, yesterday I tried to move some MIDI (that's right, MIDI) files (ringtones) over from my old phones to my new phone; to my surprise, those MIDI files were copy protected! The phone refused to let me move them! And this is an UNLOCKED and UNBRANDED PHONE! We're not talking about Justin Timberlake's latest howling -- we're talking about 3 second long MIDI RINGTONES! Hell is on earth)

2 comments:

Chris Matthieu said...

Companies should be using digital rights assignments rather than digital rights management. The difference is DRA tracks the license without controlling the media.

Numly.com, the Web 2.0 next generation copyright and DRA service launched in 2006 but it is gaining momentum.

Numly Numbers track the submission timestamp of a work as well as the licensee or copyright holder (submitter). Copyrights can include All Rights Reserved or Creative Commons licenses.

Each additional copy of work sold or licensed can also be assigned a Numly Number allowing the original author or artist to track their works and license assignments per work.

Ted Pavlic said...

I'm not quite sure how that is going to help in the music case. People who sell music on on-line stores are going to want a way to prevent people from transferring content to someone else. They want to be able to make money every time the product enters a new person's hands.

I don't think Numly is meant for this. It seems like Numly is more for allowing credit to be given where it is deserved. It doesn't seem to have the ability to solve the profit problem.