If you’re technologically inclined, it’s not difficult to strip DRM off digital stuff and play your media wherever and however you want-just like if you’re mechanically inclined, it’s not hard to remove limiters from car engines.

Because once you’ve purchased a copy of a book, don’t you own that copy? Shouldn’t you be able to read it on another device? And it does so at the expense of consumers. Making sure an ebook bought on a Kindle stays on a Kindle doesn’t protect authors. That’s where DRM gets particularly exploitative. Or move to a different platform, without rebuying all the stuff they had on the old platform. The people who want to backup their files. So, in many cases, DRM punishes the people who follow the rules. Pirates just pick the locks over the content and share it anyways. Copy protection measures are designed to ensure that one digital copy of Adele’s new single Hello doesn’t reduplicate into a thousand identical stolen digital copies.Įxcept that DRM has been increasingly ineffective at preventing copying. We are told that digital locks and DRM protect creative content and the creative-types who make it. So, why does DRM exist in the first place? DRM is the reason why that ebook you bought on a Kindle won’t play on a different e-reader. DRM is why you can’t fast forward past previews and warnings on your DVD. DRM makes it so you can only buy your apps from Apple. Buried in the movie’s encoding, a secret command made the movie unplayable on my projector.ĭRM stands for Digital Rights Management, though it’s more accurate to call it Digital Restrictions Management-because DRM restricts what people can do with their digital stuff. Turns out, my projector isn’t an Apple-approved device. So I fired up the living room projector, hooked it up to my computer, and pressed play on my rented movie. Still, a 15-inch computer screen isn’t ideal for groups.

A few clicks on a mouse are all that stood between me and a new release. For better or worse, media-movies, books, music-exist in the digital world now. There’s no Blockbuster in my town (what few brick-and-mortar video stores remain feel like stubborn holdouts from an era past). And now, a movie to cap it all off-some new, Oscar-buzzworthy flick. It had been a great day: dinner with friends, raucous stories, cold beer, lots of laughter.

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