TechoLiO
A plethora of all things technical.

This is really an unfocused article to tell you what digital rights management means in the real world. In other words it burned me and I want you to hear my rant!

DRM is a way to make sure software or other media is only used the way the copyright holder intends you to. It's really taking away what's legally called "Fair Use" on one hand, but in reality most people are interested in what I would call "reasonable use", that is to say, morally fair.

As you see elsewhere, I've review many of the online music sites, and bought music from all of them. Each has DRM with certain rights that you can read about in my reviews. The bottom line with music is that they let you burn/listen only on so many computers. Copy to an unauthorized computer and it won't work.

I also run windows XP. This has that "activation" license where it sends out over the internet a verification message to register your software. If you copy it elsewhere, it won't register (well something like that).

Anyway, both of these have to have some way to identify your computer. Since computers don't have a unique serial number to identify them, they use other means. What they do is somehow look at all of your hardware and create an identifier. I haven't researched this in detail.

So what did I upgrade (break)?

First history. Once about a year ago, I installed new ide drivers for my XP machine, and it booted and said I had to reactivate! And to boot, I couldn't do it over the internet, I had to call an 800 number. But they did reactivate it. I suppose in this case, the newer looking IDE controller made them think I had a new machine. Odd.

Well this time I upgraded my AMD 1.2ghz CPU to a newer Athlon XP 2400. That's really not a big change, all of the hardware down to the motherboard remained the same.

Here's what happened. I thought XP would choke, but no, it's fine. Changing CPU isn't a problem!

The music services, well they stink. Every one of the DRM services use windows media DRM, and all thought my machine was not the same one. Here's how each fared:

• Buymusic: Nothing would play, and depending on the song (the rights vary) I could either play only or not at all! All licensing there says burn or copy to players for "master" computer only. My master is "gone" since it got upgraded. They get a big fat F.
• Napster: Nothing would play, but I thought I would be OK. They have a feature I really liked that lets you "sync" your songs already purchased to any of three machines. And any machine can transfer/burn. So even if Napster thought my computer was different, it wouldn't matter since I could do three anyway.
  Think again! The sync would download the file, but it said I had to buy it again. Gee thanks! Big F for Napster.
• Music Match: Nothing would play outside the music match player, but playing them inside the player allowed me to get them all working again, and able to burn.
• ITunes: Same as the others, thought I was a new computer. But like Napster (claims), they also allow three machines. But in their case it worked, and songs could play again,.
• AllOfMp3.com: Well it's mp3 so no worries, A+.

Doomed?

Now don't go crying because there are remedies. If you burn what you buy to a normal CD, you have a backup. Or if like me you reripped (or somehow converted) to mp3, that's another backup.

A funny note here. I had installed best buy's DRM software (yes they have a service too) which is also DRM using windows media. When some of my music match songs wouldn't play in the media player, the best buy screen came up saying to buy it there! How's that for stealth marketing??

Me? I've had it with the pay services with DRM now that allofmp3.com has proven good. I was willing to give the DRM a lot more of a chance than anyone else I talked to, but it's proven impractical. Those files really just seem so fragile knowing this DRM is so sensitive and restrictive.

It's hard enough to sell intangible items like music and software, but now they're somewhat less than intangible, ready to be yanked out of your hands at any time! No thanks!