And wait theres more – even in the ‘exception case’ when DRM ‘works’, the coolness of remix on the readwrite web will usually break. For example, even a simple username/password (that you have) in an rss feed creates a barrier to the free flow of stuff.

Here is a little post with some of my thoughts inspired by Stephen Downes:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/mikese/Blog/cns!1p6t4igVZ5-R-npCeqnrN2MA!704.entry

Fang – Mike Seyfang – LearnDog

DRM decreases piracy? I’d like to know how you arrive at that statement.

DVD-CSS was supposed to make it impossible for me to copy a DVD and play the copy. It is DRM. It is total crap.

The XBOX 360 was supposed to be DRM’ed to the nines, as was the original XBOX supposed to be protected as well. The 360 was cracked a month after it came out to store shelves.

I’ve thought about this at some length. First of all, “we” aren’t doing anything. Giant international companies are attempting to eliminate personally owned copies. Their wet dream is to get money every time you hear a song, to be paid for every sitcom you watch. They also want you to pay for the player with the coinslot and the bandwidth it requires.

I am definitely not moving away from ownership. I just bought a big honkin’ disk to hold all the stuff I’ve gotten from eMusic or downloaded from the likes of the old MP3.com, Epitonic, Amazon, Kill Rock Stars, etc.

People like to collect things. People who like shot glasses have shelves full of shot glasses. People who like music have shelves full of albums, or servers full of disk drives, depending on their storage preferences. People collect things because they perceive value in them. It’s in our nature to preserve what we consider valuable. Those who are particularly well off build libraries and museums.

I don’t need to connect to a license server to play my Moody Blues albums wherever and on whatever equipment I wish. I don’t need to be online to load the albums I bought from eMusic onto my iRiver. I don’t need to wonder if Napster to Go or Rhapsody will still have the albums I like a year from now (a truely hypothetical argument since they don’t have most of the albums I like now anyway). I won’t have to choose between being able to play the Helldorado album I got last month and buying a better laptop next year. The idea of subscribing to a vast library is appealing. The fact that the contents of the library, and my access to it, is at the whim of a soulless corporation is not.

(btw, There’s a free trial link for eMusic on my site if you’d like to check it out. I wouldn’t want anybody to boycott Dave because I posted a commercial link.)

Maybe this will motivate me to get all the stuff I’ve gotten from ITMS transferred into a more universal format, while I still can.

-k-