http://norman.walsh.name/2005/07/08/drm 8 99 2005-07-08T15:26:59-04:00 $Date: 2006-01-30 11:09:58 -0500 (Mon, 30 Jan 2006) $ Norman Walsh 2005 Norman Walsh I'm not a thief or a crook and, you know, I don't have to put up with being treated like one. S. R. Covey Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things. Speaking of anger, DRM pisses me off too. This afternoon, I deleted all my iTunes files. Granted, I only had nine, and at least three of those were freebies, so it wasn't a financial hardship. I had managed to crack the DRM Digital Rights Management DRM on a couple of songs months ago, when I first tried iTunes out, so that I could damned well install them on my iPod using the tools I want to use. But something's changed and it didn't work with the songs I bought a few days ago. As I was hunting around on the web, looking for some updated cracking tool, it struck me that being treated like a thief was turning me into a crook. I've seen this movie before. Back in the early eighties, I worked in retail. I had a part-time job at a computer store where I got to watch first hand the battle between the copy-protection schemers and the copy-protection-cracking schemers. It was not pretty. In the end, as I recall it, the consumers revolted and all that copy-protection nonsense went away. I remember how refreshing and sensible the Borland “treat it like a book” license seemed at the time. Still does, in fact. Well, I'm revolting. (Read that any way you like :-) I buy the music I listen to, but if you want to sell me music (or any other media for that matter) sell it to me without all this DRM crap all over it. That's not actually going to stop the folks who aren't honest, but it's a bloody inconvenient nuisance for those of us who are. Sell it to me without the DRM or I ain't buying it.