Disclaimer: Cory Doctorow is a great writer, and I agree with him on most of his rants, but when he gets going on DRM, I can’t help but think he does it with an amount of venom disproportionate to the scope of the issue.
PlaybackTime, a blog about digital media, rips Cory a new one about a post of his in many profound ways. Here’s just a small sampling.
He disassembles Cory’s core argument that Apple’s DRM hurts the usefulness of the iPod:
He also implies that this somehow reduces consumer choice, which is silly. Here are several completely legal ways to get music that will play perfectly on your iPod:
* Buy and rip CDs
* Buy DRM-free music from eMusic
* Buy DRM’d music from the iTunes Music Store
* Buy DRM’d music using any system that lets you burn CDs, then rip it
* Download free (public domain, Creative Commons-licensed, etc.) music
* Subscribe to music-focused podcasts
Then, he smashes the point home at the end:
So, Apple didn’t invent the concept of DRM. The iPod doesn’t force you to buy DRM-encrypted content, and there’s lots of alternatives. And consumers don’t seem to particularly mind Apple’s DRM implementation a whole heck of a lot. So why the angst in his pants?
Apple’s DRM is the least restrictive of all. If you own an iPod, you buy your music for $0.99 from iTunes and that’s that. Or you rip your own. Or you buy unrestricted content from a site like Magnatune.com. And so on and so forth. If you want to purchase from Apple’s store, you need Apple’s player if, and only if, you want to transfer it to a portable. If you want to keep it on your computer, go forth and purchase my son.
If you own a Samsung, Creative Labs, Sandisk, or some other “iPod killer” you have even more options. Tons of digital music stores are available, but guess what? Every one of them also incorporates DRM, so there ya go. You have the same options for non-DRM’ed content as Apple.
What this post, and most complaints about iTunes / The iPod seems to reek of is jealousy. Jealousy that you can’t break into the best music store online with your generic player. Sorry folks, but it wasn’t created for you and your Nomad Zen 32 Special Black Neeon Movie Edition 3.1. Were it not for visceral hatred, people like Cory have no argument and no case whatsoever.
If you don’t want to take part in Apple’s DRM, don’t. Use iTunes (or one of the 30 bazillion other third-party apps out there) to transfer your songs to the iPod and get them from wherever the hell you want to. There’s nothing stopping you, and your iPod is only as DRM’ed as you make it. I for one don’t care about DRM. Most of my music is from the iTunes store (to the tune of about $2,200 worth of music). I own an iPod and I love iTunes. If you don’t, don’t use it!
That’s the funny part about people like Cory Doctorow and Chris Pirillo. They both seem to assume that the iPod is a closed system because you can’t get songs for it from any other online music store. They beat this partial truth into the ground to the point where they’ve become entirely disconnected from what we commonly refer to as reality. It’s nice to see someone take at least one of them to task in a truthful and straightforward way.
Cory won’t be happy until every single piece of content ever created is 100% free. That’s simply an unrealistic and somewhat stupid notion. Content creators want to maintain some degree of control over the content they create, and that will evolve over time. People like Cory tossing bombs at creators for not letting their content out in the open for nothing but attribution is not going to endear content creators to the idea.
Technorati Tags: content creation, cory doctorow, chris pirillo, drm, playbacktime
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