Hugh D’Andrade points out that Sony is rumored to be on the verge of ditching its proprietary, DRM-encumbered Connect service. As he points out, it’s a cautionary tale for consumers considering the purchase of DRM-infected content:
Sony Connect customers could strip out DRM from their music, or tech creators could reverse engineer the DRM to create compatible devices. But sadly, these solutions are illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The truth is, these dangers exist whenever you buy DRMed music from any vendor. You’re locked into the limited array of players that the DRM is compatible with, and, if that DRM some day is entirely unsupported, you’re out of luck.
The continuing appeal of vinyl records shows how wrong-headed this approach is.
LPs continue to play just fine, decades after the makers of the first record players have gone out of business, thanks to the kind of interoperability that DRM lacks. That’s not just good value for customers who bought LPs, it’s also good value for a society that values archives and the ability to access its cultural history long after the companies that distributed it have died off.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Users who bought music infected with Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM faced a similar dilemma when Microsoft announced its introduction of the incompatible Zune format. Buying DRM-encumbered content always means that you’re dependent on the company that created the DRM scheme.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.