Tag Archives: drm

Spore opens anti-DRM flood gates

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It looks as though the highly anticipated science-based video game Spore, from the makers of SimCity and The Sims, is particularly low-ranked on Amazon. Although the game has met with some lackluster reviews, that’s not the reason for the pitiful rating. It’s because of DRM. Electronic Arts decided that Spore should include DRM that would only allow the purchaser to install the game 3 times. You can call them up and argue for a 4th, but then they’ll want proof that you purchased the game. Even then it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get it. A huge number of computer gamers are so angry about this that they decided to trash the game’s rating on Amazon. At the time of writing this, 616/672 people gave it a 1-star rating. DRM is completely useless, and it doesn’t work. It just makes it harder for actual consumers to make use of what they pay for. Maybe this will finally get that message across to the video game execs. Read a much better article on this topic at Ars Technica

The Day The Music Died

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This is so incredibly frustrating. On one hand, I want to rub people’s faces in it. But on the other, I see a ton of people every day buying songs from iTunes, and they’re in the same boat. They just don’t think it could happen to them, or they don’t care because the DRM isn’t getting in their way of listening to music they’ve “bought”. Or even worse, they don’t even know what DRM is or why they should avoid it like the plague. With DRM, the customer is always wrong:

Imagine if Tower Records sold you a CD, but then, a few months later, knocked on your door and replaced the CD with one that you can’t play in your car. Would you still feel like you “owned” the CD? Not so much, eh?

But Apple reserves the right to change at any time what you can do with the music you purchase at the iTunes Music Store. For instance, in April 2004, Apple decided to modify the DRM so people could burn the same playlist only 7 times, down from 10. How much further will the service restrict your ability to make legal personal copies of your own music? Only Apple knows.

Don’t let this become your fate. Own your music if you’re going to buy it online. Buy from Amazon MP3, which offers DRM-free music for cheaper than iTunes, and they even add it to your iTunes library automatically! Or if you feel you must buy from iTunes, never settle for anything less than DRM-free (iTunes “Plus”). Otherwise, it’s smarter to just buy the CD for a few bucks more.

Microsoft to squash third world economies

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In a rather disturbing article, I found out that Microsoft was none too pleased that One Laptop Per Child has been distributing laptops with a free and open source linux operating system installed (RHEL). They can’t have everyone in a third world country growing up using gnu/linux and not Windows. Plus think about all the money they’ll be losing in the long run. It’s a much better idea to make sure these people pay for the technology they’re using and the knowledge they’re gaining with DRM.

With OLPC based on all Free Software, it was likely that those books would have themselves been under similar licensing like Creative Content. Now, it is likely that third world students will be running DRM-locked textbooks that are only acessable under Windows. -Bruce Perens