It involves inflicting a recurring technical, infrastructural, and administrative cost on all of their sales in perpetuity to solve a problem they can’t prove exists. By tying their entire catalogue, in perpetuity, to the fate and competence of a single external service provider (whoever provides the DRM solution) publishers are taking a business risk of unfathomable proportions. These are the kinds of risks that sink large companies.

But back to my user journey. After the 404 error I took control of the user experience myself. I Googled “Doctor Who S07E01 torrent”, and I very much doubt I’ll ever attempt to use UltraViolet™ again.

So, because DRM never goes wrong, let's just vandalize the content created by the purchasers of our software. Oh wait, we meant to do that to the pirates. Oh well.

I just want us all to get along. I want my disparate equipment to talk to each other. I don't want to live in a house where ever component has to be made by the same company otherwise nothing works correctly. I don't want to be stuck using a crappy product because they're the only ones offering service X.

Amazon wipes a woman's Kindle and shuts down her account. This is why I strip the DRM from every Kindle book I buy, and archive each away on my home server. And, also, why I rarely buy Kindle books.

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

As ebook sales mushroom, the Big Six's insistence on DRM has proven to be a hideous mistake. Rather than reducing piracy[*], it has locked customers in Amazon's walled garden, which in turn increases Amazon's leverage over publishers. And unlike pirated copies (which don't automatically represent lost sales) Amazon is a direct revenue threat because Amazon are have no qualms about squeezing their suppliers — or trying to poach authors for their "direct" publishing channel by offering initially favourable terms. (Which will doubtless get a lot less favourable once the monopoly is secured ...)

Adobe's decision to stop developing mobile Flash shouldn't surprise: Adobe can see there's more money in preventing people watching stuff than enabling them to do so.
...
Amazon's Kindle might be the biggest kid on the block, but just about all the other electronic book readers rely on Adobe's Digital Editions DRM to protect (and distribute) their content (which is laid out using the Adobe-owned-but-happily-shared ePub format).

a kind of a swiss knife for a Steam content and stuff to process and launch.
It has some additional features for launching Source and GoldSource games.

There are more than a few reasons digital rights management (DRM) has been largely unsuccessful. But the easiest way to explain to a consumer why DRM doesn't work is to put it in terms he understands: "What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?" It was one thing when it was a theoretical question. Now it's a historical one. Rhapsody just had the next in a line of DRM music services to go--this week the company told its users than anyone with RAX files has unil November 7 to back them up in another format or lose them the next time they upgrade their systems.

The reality of DRM and gaming and pirate ships full of games

This may gain more traction if it were titled "Why you can't play your library's copy of Battlefield 3 online"

You love your Kindle, but you hate the DRM. What do you do? Well, if you like, we’ll tell you how to strip the copy-protection from your e-books, leaving a plain, vanilla e-book file in the format of your choice. This doesn’t just work for Kindle book, either. The method, detailed by Apprentice Alf, will also remove DRM from Mobipocket, Barnes and Noble, Adobe Digital Editions and Fictionwise books, making these stores much more attractive to buyers.

"I buy books. A lot of them, and I like to own the books I purchase. By that statement I mean that I want to be able to read the book on whatever device I want. To be able to do that I have to remove the DRM from the books I buy.<br />
<br />
I NEVER distribute the books I buy, and neither should you."

"A tribute to "fair use" and the AP's misguided crusade against the hyperlink. All content on this site was generated automatically from the AP's own RSS feeds. (Sorry, we forgot to include your magic DRM beans.) ♥"

"This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final. "

"A week and a half ago, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton made some news for saying that nothing good had come from the internet, period. Plenty of online sites (including ours) took him to task for that, wondering how one gets to be the CEO of a major content company without understanding the internet. Today, Lynton hit back at critics -- not by saying he was quoted out of context or misunderstood, but by standing behind the statement and adding some gems to it as well. Let's take a look..."

"Unfortunately, DRM can sometimes feel like a rug that can be yanked out from under our feet at any moment."

"Personally, despite my neverending love affair with the written word, I’m getting tired of owning print books. There, I’ve said it. They take up a whole lot of space, they clutter, and they’re obnoxious to pack (yes, I’ve moved twice in the last five years and that may not be the end of it, how about you?). For my purposes, with most books, ebooks would be far preferable both for one-time and many-time reads… if I could be assured of keeping my many-time reads."

"Leave it to Apple (AAPL) to turn the lifting of restrictions into a profit center. If users convert every one of the 9 billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store over the past six years, a rich new revenue stream will flow toward Cupertino. Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld calls it Apple’s “$1.8 billion music tax.”"

"That’s me in the DVD. But because the MPAA makes software companies bend over to protect their content by baking DRM into the apps that ship with my computer, I’m prevented from doing legitimate things with my own content. Thankfully, there are ways around it (Jing was more than happy to capture a screenshot - I’m sure the MPAA attack dogs will be closing that hole ASAP)."

"All those companies (cough Amazon cough Apple cough) that say they're only doing DRM for now, until they can convince the stupid entertainment execs to ditch it, heed this lesson: you will spend the rest of your corporate life paying for this mistake, maintaining infrastructure whose sole purpose is to lock your customers into a technology restriction that no one really believes in. Welcome to the infinite cost of doing business with Hollywood. "

"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. "

"Companies that control various DRM schemes, as well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any moment—no matter what your expectation was when you bought it."

"The maxim goes that new technologies don’t kill off old media — radio didn’t kill newspapers, TV didn’t kill radio, etc. But it’s not clear this maxim will hold true in the digital age"

"Our kids will laugh when we’re 60 and we don’t know which button turns on the garbage disposal and which one vents plasma from the starboard nacelles."

"The release of popular rock group Radiohead's new album Wednesday is the latest wake-up call for a music industry still struggling to deal with the advent of digital music, experts say."

"customers using iTunes Plus will have their username and email address embedded in each DRM-free track they download."

"Higher Quality DRM-Free Tracks Now Available on the iTunes Store Worldwide"

"Key revocation doesn't work. Suing the Internet doesn't work. DRM doesn't work ... Pirates who download movies don't ever see DRM. Honest customers who buy media are the only people who ever get restricted by it "

"You forced me into stabbing your product with a carving knife. Is that really the sort of "initial user experience" you were hoping for?"

"This is my favorite DRM fairy tale of all: that someone out there will use DRM to charge you less and deliver more."

'...racking my brains for what I actually do instead of just saying "I need Windows, so too bad about the raping."'

"In spite of the lack of IP protection for clothing designs—or rather, because of this lack, the authors argue—the fashion industry remains vibrant and profitable"

"The Barenaked Ladies are offering their latest album, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me,” as a download from their website without digital rights managment."

"Amazon's new video-on-demand store may sound like a good idea, but once you take a look at the "agreement" you enter into by giving them your money, that changes."

"Whatever you do, don’t buy DRM’d ebooks. You are just ripping yourself off in the long run." Amen to that. I've bought a few ebooks with DRM, and it was all a waste.

"Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants."

"The Pig and the Box is about a pig who finds a magic box that can replicate anything you put into it. "

"The Hollywood cartels' stranglehold on our legislative system that ensures they can buy any law that they want."

"Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future."

"offer songs as high quality, variable bit rate MP3 files instead. DRM is removed, consumers are happy, and the vast white fields of the iPod are ready for harvest."

"For those who aren't familiar with Mr. Giovanetti's work, he's a frequent and pugnacious commentator on intellectual property issues, and an avowed supporter of the DMCA and digital rights management technologies."

"Copy protection schemes have, by and large, been a hoax from the start."

I'd totally buy this game, if I had a PC on which to play it.

"Digital Rights Managements hurts paying customers, destroys Fair Use rights, renders customers' investments worthless, and can always be defeated. Why are consumers and publishers being forced to use DRM?"

"Yes, I would. I'd steal it in a second if the stolen version allowed me to fast-forward past the fucking adverts."

"We don't want this technology to be available to every hobbyist. We need to keep the number of licensees down to a manageable number. We charge a license fee to keep the number of people we have to deal with down to a level we can handle."

I'm almost fine with this, if it can be done in a way that only affects the content of groups who want to opt into this bullshit. Don't cripple devices in the general case, just for the case of these morons. Let their industry commit suicide.

You know what? If they want to protect their steaming piles so badly, they can keep them. I've paid more attention and been more entertained by non-DRM, indie sources lately than anything else. I only expect that to grow.

"Absolutists who argue that DRM is evil and should be shunned are ignoring reality."

"We need to do with video what we've started doing with music: building a new and independent industry."

"Having one of the world's largest and currently most powerful IT companies announce that it has constructed a new DRM system and then not reveal a single detail about the technology is just plain unacceptable."

"copy this warning text, or get your hands on the actual insert, and mail it to everyone that represents you in government."

"If I fear that any CD I buy will silently install a bunch of crap on my computer, Apple's DRM doesn't sound quite so bad."

"This component is not malicious and does not compromise security." And this lamprey on your neck sure does mean well.

"The halcyon days of 'owning' your music may soon be over."

"it's a funny kind of contract that is renegotiated at the whim of one side, who can unilaterally change the deal whenever he feels like it, and which you can't get out of if you decide that the new deal isn't one that 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

"Music is for life, not just for christmas." Amen.

"Richard Stallman, self-proclaimed founder of all that is Free, calls it Treacherous Computing."

"I will say that we heard a lot in the boom about the death of distance and the erasure of place, but that DRM developers have been working hard (between region coding, location-awareness, geolocation, and proximity detection) to bring place and distance

"Apple's actually the good guy in this scenario and you are the bad guy."