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Zombie DRM

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I hate to beat a dead horse, but the horse’s promoters provide a convenient excuse when they claim the dead horse is making a comeback. The horse in question of course is DRM (emphasis added):

“(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM,” said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA’s technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. “Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.

CC using record label Magnatune just announced a DRM-free subscription service.

Another jewel from the same News.com article:

Fritz Attaway, executive vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America said: “We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us.”

If you needed DRM to show users the limits of a license, CC licenses would require DRM. Instead, CC licenses repudiate (known forms of) DRM. No, the only thing the RIAA and MPAA are showing their customers is disrespect.

Of course this is a really old story.

We need Digital Asset Management tools that help our computers help us manage content, not DRM that turns our computers against us.

Via TechDirt.

Posted 08 May 2008

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