David Bruce Murray
Jun 25, 2009
Food For Thought|Other Forums
DRM Is Still Bad
Doug Harrison recently commented on the Amazon Kindle’s digital rights management (DRM) issues. To get up to speed on the back story, click HERE.
The average consumer doesn’t care about DRM until it directly affects them, which may be a few years after the purchase. It will happen sooner or later. No device lasts a lifetime. By then, Amazon is banking on you not caring enough to complain.
Some people will buy the same book again. No one should have to do that if they’re willing to go to the trouble of making their own backups.
Of course, we all know DRM affects music, as well. It was one thing back in the day when a cassette wore out. A cassette is a physical product, and backups of cassettes never were the greatest option, since the quality degrades. It’s another thing entirely when the company you bought the book or song from retains the ability to restrict your access to said string of ones and zeros if they decide they don’t like you any more.
This isn’t all of the story, either. The Kindle used to offer a text-to-speech function, but that feature was later disabled by Amazon…and not just on new Kindles. People who were already using the feature suddenly learned they could no longer do that with their Kindle. That would be like buying a car and suddenly losing the ability to turn on the windshield washer.
It should be illegal to sell a product and then remove a key feature after the customer has paid for it.
