Why DRM Doesn't Work

Here are some articles for your reading pleasure:

• E-Book Provider goes out of Business, Book Owners can’t access Books
• Amazon deletes books already purchased on Kindle

There are plenty of others.  But you’ll realize that, in those articles, the people who were losing their digital property were people who had actually done the right thing and purchased the items, spent the money to pay for the rights to read and own those books.  These were not pirates that were getting punished by DRM, but the people who had bought these things legally.

The primary purpose of DRM is to prevent piracy and protect digital property from theft.  To do this, publishers of digital content place DRM on the things that people buy from them.

However, pirated music/books/films/games/etc. are easily attainable for the people who pirate them without any DRM restrictions on them whatsoever.  A prime example of this is the Will Wright game, Spore, which shipped with some of the most restrictive and invasive DRM available, SecuROM.  Spore was already available before the official release in a DRM free version on torrent servers, free to pirates.  It was the people who bought the game who got the DRM.

And this is why DRM does not work.  It does nothing to stop piracy and does a lot to infringe upon what most consumers expect to be purchasing when they buy something.  What happens if you buy a game or an MP3 of some music with limited installs – and the computer that you have it installed on breaks down or gets replaced in some way? Well, if it happens relatively soon, you can call the company and get those installs reset.  What about years down the road, though, or what if the company that made it goes bankrupt? Will that number still work?

I am very anti-piracy and anti-theft.  A writer myself, I believe that everyone should be compensated for their work just as I expect to be.  However, I do not believe that punishing the consumer who actually sets out to do the right thing and buy an item from you is the way to go about stopping piracy. I know that when I learn that something has DRM on it, I generally choose not to purchase it.  If a legal DRM free alternative is available, I’ll happily buy that, but if not,  I don’t turn around and download a pirated version . . . I simply make the decision that I can do without it.  I don’t want to spend my money on something only to have it snatched from my hands later.  I’d rather not risk that.

There are alternatives to DRM that do work, without punishing the consumer.  Music and print publishing companies should take a look at Corey Doctorow and Jonathan Coulton, who publish their work DRM free (and often completely freely available) with Creative Commons licensing.  Valve, with Steam, has the right idea.  Steam doesn’t just protect the publisher by helping to discourage piracy – it provides a service to the consumer as well, making it simple and easy to download games with the assurance that they won’t just disappear.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazon ironically deletes “1984″ from Kindle devices (downloadsquad.com)
• Death To SecuROM! (rockpapershotgun.com)
• EA ‘dumps DRM’ for next Sims game (news.bbc.co.uk)

Geekery, Technology Creative Commons, DRM, E-books, Publishing, Rant, SecuROM