The biggest problem with DRM is that it often punishes legit customers. I always thought DRM was no big deal until I signed up for Google Music. I have a net book running Linux so I decided that having my iTunes library on Google music would be a awesome way to have my iTunes library everywhere )I don't want to pay for iCloud sync). I was excited to save hard drive space (I have less than 100gb on the netbook) and still have my library but I was disappointed when I couldn't upload about 20 songs to the service. Sure, 20 songs out of 3,000 isn't much but they were damn good songs and they were mine so why shouldn't I be able to do this?
Up till then I thought people were just whining but now I see the folly in my ways. I'm definitely for some sort of protection for content authors but there must be another way. Maybe they could have a DR,-like system that allows you to use it on X devices the same way you can authorize a number of devices to sync in iTunes. Still, we can do even better. What about a system that somehow measures ownership differently. Like maybe somehow make it so you have to use a password if you want to transfer a protected file to some other device?
Is that naive? Has it been done? I just recently changed my position on DRM so I still have much to learn. Does anyone know of something like I'm describing and is this feasible technically?
As a side note, presuming that the DRMed tracks are from iTunes there is away around the problem. If you are a US user, you can sign up for iTunes Match, match the DRMed tracks, download DRM-free versions of the matched DRMed tracks and then cancel your subscription.
I think Apple would charge you for a whole month, so it probably isn't worth it for 20 tracks, but in case anyone else is in the same boat with a larger amount of music...
As another option, you always had the itunes plus option of "upgrading" your tracks to the non-drm versions. I upgraded my last drm purchase about 2 years ago according to the timestamp.
Itunes has been drm free for some time now, drm on music is quite... quaint by now.
It is just very very hard to do. You have to get all these different device manufactors together to sign up and agree on how you measure a device. If my phone breaks and my phone company gives me a new one of the same model as replacement, does that count? What if it breaks and I buy one myself off amazon and claim it of my phone insurance, does that count? What if my phone is stolen? Does that count? For computers, it's even more complicated. It's a Sisyphean task and someone will get burned.
Up till then I thought people were just whining but now I see the folly in my ways. I'm definitely for some sort of protection for content authors but there must be another way. Maybe they could have a DR,-like system that allows you to use it on X devices the same way you can authorize a number of devices to sync in iTunes. Still, we can do even better. What about a system that somehow measures ownership differently. Like maybe somehow make it so you have to use a password if you want to transfer a protected file to some other device?
Is that naive? Has it been done? I just recently changed my position on DRM so I still have much to learn. Does anyone know of something like I'm describing and is this feasible technically?