DRM Sucks

Warning: This post contains foul language, adult references, and satire. Anal insertion of recordable / pre-recorded media is not condoned by the publisher under any circumstances. No matter how extreme the provocation. Thank you.


DRM Sucks. That isn't just an opinion, that is a solid gold fact.

Let me explain. If you are a publisher then please take note of this: DRM does not stop piracy. It does not significantly reduce copying. If mainly serves to punish the people who have actually bought your products. You know, your customers.

Let's give some examples. If I buy a DVD (and I've bought a fair few over the years) I don't want to have to watch a presentation on why piracy is bad. Look, I've already bought the fucking DVD, what more do you want from me? Let's make it worse and have it play every time we put the DVD in the drive shall we? No, let's go further and make it so you can't skip past it. Oh, wait, you already have.

Look, put it on rental copies by all means, in fact it makes sense to do so. But what gives you the right to waste five minutes of my time on each and every fucking disk of a boxed set that I have already paid for?

If someone can let me know whose bright idea that was then I'd appreciate it, because I've got more than two hundred legally bought DVDs that I'd like to shove one-by-one up that fuckwit's arse. Without the aid of lubricant.

You know what's really ironic about it? How about the fact that pirated versions of the dvds won't have that message on it. You're pissing off the honest people who have bought it from you not the pirates!

How about music? A short look at recent history shows that when you "buy" DRM protected music you can end up loosing out big time, especially if the company that you've "bought" the tracks from goes out of business, or decides to stop publishing music. Your music collection that you've paid for can quickly become worthless.

Does the DRM stop people pirating the music? No. You can install the pirated MP3s anywhere you like, on any device that supports MP3s. How about your DRM protected music? Think it's going to work on your £15 mp3 player? You never know, you might be lucky. Then again, you probably won't.

Games are even worse. Unique registration keys? Fine. Using the CD as a key is annoying, but I can live with that. Phoning home via the internet is mildly irritating, but not the end of the world. Restricting the number of times that I can reinstall the game though? Not a good idea, not unless I'm getting the game at a serious discount. Want me to pay full price and only be able to re-install the game three times? How about you fuck off and come back when you're serious about wanting my money and not about wasting my time.

So what can we do about this? I'm not sure that boycotting products would work, as the publishers would blame the low sales on piracy, making them more determined than ever to make life difficult for us honest folk.

So how about this, let them know that it isn't good enough. If we buy something then the agreement should be that it is ours to keep and use as we see fit without unnecessary restrictions. Track down pirates by all means, sue them into oblivion, string them up by the nuts if it makes you happy. Just don't punish the honest customers.