Why DRM is Doomed to Failure

I'm back, folks! Not sure if I'll be here tomorrow night, but we'll see how much studying I get done between now and then. Since I appear to have some new readers unfamiliar with the deal with DRM, I figured that now was as good as any to do another rant about it with the advent of this article, which talks about why Digital Rights Management (DRM) isn't economically feasible. To sum it up, we have a non-scarce good, music, and they're trying to make it scarce. I know, it sounds kind of stupid, but it's true. It's reducing the value of music because it's reducing how we can use it. When you have to have more than one application to manage your music, that's pretty messed up. As if it isn't enough that these companies don't trust the consumers, they also don't trust each other! Not only that, but this stuff is trivial to crack, it's just annoying to do so. So what's the point? I wish I knew. It's really bad economics even without all this scarcity stuff, because they're trying to gain a market segment that's losing them another market segment: the people who will put up with this crap in exchange for the people who will now find illegal ways to get music because they don't want to pay to deal with DRM. I wish I remember more from Economics. I guess second at nationals only gives you mad skills for like 6 months tops.

Is it just me, or does it sound 1984-ish to track who uploads images or photos online? I don't mean by user name, I mean entire identity and all. And I don't mean just new stuff, I mean everything. Maybe I'm just a fan of privacy too much, but I just don't buy this business of giving the government more power under some umbrella concerns.

Does homework really stink? According to a Chicago area school, it does. Wow, I really sucked at bringing that up in a clever Seinfeld reference. Anyway, I think this is kind of extreme. Kids are overworked, but not quite that early in life. If they play too much it's going to hamper them. They need homework!

To balance out my illegal endorsements of torrents, here's a list of legal torrent sites. They really are worth checking out, it's not just junk content. Oh, and how's this for another one-liner: someone codified the responses of Nirav. I don't even think you need to know who Nirav is to enjoy that list. The accuracy is impeccable.

I wanted to read this, but I didn't have time. It's a huge round-up of whether or not Apple can take on Microsoft. I do like reading these things, just no time today.

So I know some of you came here to read about more than technology. Too bad =P I need to go to bed now so I can get up at 8. In the interest of including a picture in this post though, let's see who can figure out what this poorly taken picture was supposed to be: