DRM killed my Media

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, or as I prefer to call it, Digital Restrictions Management. DRM protection is one of the banes of my existence. The idea of DRM was originally to guard copyrighted materials from being illegally pirated. The copyright holders claim that these so called “pirates” are destroying the entertainment industry. However, what DRM protection really is doing is driving their avid consumers away from legally obtaining their media.

My one main problem with DRM is that it ends up punishing individuals who are legally purchasing their media. For instance, over the summer I purchased a television show online from Amazon.com and downloaded the episodes to my computer. Being the techno-geek that I am, I purchased the high definition (HD) versions because who wouldn’t want to watch a show in HD?

Feeling all happy with my new purchase, I decided to transfer the shows to my PS3 in order to play it on my HD TV. Nope, turns out I can’t transfer it. It’s literally tied to my computer. I can’t even burn a DVD disc to play in a DVD player due to that pesky DRM copyright protection. Apparently, the company fears that I will take my purchase television show, make thousands of copies, and sell them to the highest bidders; thus allowing me to retire as a multibillionaire at the age of 21, resulting in the pirated company’s ultimate demise.

It’s ridiculous that my legally purchased television show can’t be watched on my beautiful television all due to the paranoia of copyright protection. I could have easily logged on to a BitTorrent site, pirated the HD episodes, and burnt them to a disc. Then I would be happily watching my shows on my HD TV with the company none the wiser. But no, instead I’m sitting here, forced to watch my beautiful HD show in crappy standard definition. I guess that will teach me for trying to do things the legal way.

Songs, too, face this same dilemma. Feeling the need to dabble in the archaic form of music purchasing, you impulsively buy your favorite CD at a music store. You love the CD and play it a billion times in your ancient CD player, instead of say ripping it to iTunes or putting it on a music player. Eventually it gets scratched and refuses to play.

Oops, sorry, you’ll have to buy a new CD. What you have purchased is a product and when that product breaks you’ll have to replace it. Wait, I thought I was purchasing the songs? Apparently not.

If the entertainment industry wants to force individuals to purchase their music legally, they need to remove DRM protection. Consumers would be much more willing to pay the $0.99 for a song when they know that, once they’ve purchased it, it’s theirs for life! They can burn copies of it, transfer it to their iPod or music player, play it on their computer, etc. The electronic media you purchase should be yours to do with as you wish. After all it was you who purchased it.