Digital Home Thoughts: Charlie Demerjian Says "DRM is a Lie"

"DRM is a lie. When an agenda driven DRM infection peddler gets on a soapbox and blathers about how it is necessary to protect the BMW payments of a producer who leeches off the talented, rest assured, they are lying to you. DRM has absolutely nothing to do with protecting content, it is about protecting the wallets of major corporations. The funny thing is they aren't protecting it from you, they are protecting it from each other. Let's look at the shattering success of every DRM solution to date. Every single one has failed. The score card is hundreds if not thousands against, zero for. Name me one song, movie or software title that is DRM infected that has not found it's way to the net within a week of release, usually long before release. There are none. To protect content, DRM is an abject and total failure, and will continue to be."

A rather vitriolic article over at The Inquirer, but I can't say that I disagree with much of it. DRM has done more to hurt consumers, and content creators (musicians, actors, etc.) than it has done to help them. DRM only helps the middleman. Although I will say that the problem of one company creating DRM to not allow their content to work with other devices is really all about Apple and, to a lesser degree, Sony. When you buy a PlaysForSure device, it may have DRM on the audio tracks, but you can at least be assured it will play on any PlaysForSure device that you buy. A small step in the right direction, though I still bypass DRM whenever possible.

Anyone have a good story about hellish DRM problems? Share your pain, I'm listening.