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[Red Hawk]

Found this article on ITWire. DRM is annoying and I personally wish this type of protection didn't exits.

Technology and marketing wizard Steve Jobs has told the world that he thinks DRM should go, but Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music says Jobs’ idea is “completely without logic or merit”, which sounds pretty looney tunes to us!

Under pressure from European countries trying to force Steve Jobs and Apple to license their Fairplay DRM system to third parties has forced Steve Jobs to come to a realization that the world’s music companies should have figured out from the start: DRM is bad, an instead of increasing sales, only hinders them.

Remember Napster? When it was at its peak, people happily shared music like there was no tomorrow. It was easy to find any track you wanted and listen to it, and was almost music-on-demand. Its said that CD sales were never higher – but ever since Napster has been closed down, CD sales have slowly decreased year-on-year.

Music companies say it’s all because of piracy, but since Napster closed down and the music industry started messing with music files that could be found on other P2P networks, reliably getting pirated music from the Internet has become harder for the everyday consumer, and not easier.

It’s also opened up consumers to the risk of downloading viruses, spyware, malware and other net nasties, some of which may have been inserted into P2P networks by music companies or their representatives themselves, although there is no firm proof of this, only speculation.

DRM stops you from sharing your music with friends, and encouraging them to buy the original song or album themselves, or to find out the back catalogue of the artist in question.

Of course, you can still tell people about the music that you’ve purchased, but the difficulty that lies in freely sharing this with other people has clearly slowed the industry down instead of speeding it up. Given this is so very obvious, why don’t music companies try a different approach instead of continuing to hit the same nail with an ever bigger hammer?

Music companies have started doing just that, with successful experiments last year showing an increase in the number of sales of music offered without DRM. This must have come as a surprise to the music companies, but what’s more surprisingly is that they’re still so slow in moving forward and taking advantage of this momentous discovery.

Offering music without DRM is also a way for the music companies to take back control of their music, and sell it at whatever price they desire. There’s nothing stopping a music company from offering its tracks in non-DRM format such as mp3, which plays on every music player out there, from iPods to Zunes and everything in between.

Gone would be Apple’s monopoly on selling music for the iPod, as the music stores (and their existing distribution networks) can sell music for iPods direct.

Of course they already do this – and in digital format to boot – by offering it on CDs which have no DRM protection. While efforts were made to release ‘copy-protected’ CDs, these failed and only irritated consumers. Then when it was discovered that Sony was loading a rootkit onto your computer through their protected CDs, it only made consumers more angry.

Music companies – if you sell your product at a realistic and reasonable price, through a convenient online service that will easily synchronize to your music player of choice, and don’t encumber it with DRM, people will do the right thing and will purchase music instead of stealing it.

It’s a strange situation when pirated content is actually better than legitimately purchased online music through a DRM protected store, be it iTunes or one of the many Windows DRM stores. But better it is, for you can play it anywhere, on any device.

Make it easy and affordable for people to purchase, and give them the same freedoms they currently enjoy with CDs, and the barrier to purchase will disappear. Just imagine, if Steve Jobs can sell over 2 billion tracks with DRM – how many could he – and all music companies – sell if no DRM was present?

It could be the shot in the arm the music industry needs to get back onto the top of the charts. Until then, the debate continues, pushed violently forward by European threats to Apple, and Steve Jobs’ own declaration that DRM’s day of reckoning is near.

Once this battle is won – we must fight it again with other forms of digital content, including movies, books and more. We must, after all, stand up for our digital rights!

[BlueScreenOfDeath]

Seriously DRM sucks, if we purchase a movie why should we not be allowed to play it in our computer or anything else... DRM sucks and ways will and there will never be a way that the RIAA or MPAA can ever convince the public that its ever going to be ok