42
DV Cam
Roundup
Five DV cameras viewed and
reviewed, plus a peek at the
bleeding edge.The REAL
Reason
DRM Sucks
!IHt?HtM
Ed Word
Please send feedback and lemon
tarts to [email protected].A
s my wife, friends, and coworkers can attest,
I really don’t like digital-rights management
technology. I’ve railed against the choreographed
erosion of Fair Use rights for years. While I defi nitely
think people should be paid for the music they
produce, I detest DRM in its current form. It just
doesn’t make sense.
Current DRM tech, whether it’s the iTunes Music
Store’s Fairplay, protected WMA fi les, or copy-
protected “CDs,” is broken. These DRM schemes
don’t do anything to prevent determined individuals
from copying a CD or ripping it. It’s easy to decrypt
these fi les with downloadable tools that are just a
Google search away. Once decrypted, one person can
distribute the songs over the Internet to everyone in the
world. So what we have are DRM schemes that prevent
normal people from exercising their Fair Use right to
buy an album once and listen to it in their car, through a
streaming box, and on an MP3 player, but which don’t
actually do anything to stop the larger problem of music
piracy. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s bunk.
So why have hardware manufacturers gotten in bed
with the nasty music industry creeps? It’s simple! By
forcing your customers to use your proprietary DRM
scheme, you also lock them into using your hardware.
The iTunes Music Store is a perfect example. If you
spend a ton of money at the iTMS, there’s no wayyou’re going to throw out all that music and switch
to a Windows Media-compatible player that can’t
play those songs. Sure, you could burn all the songs
to CD, and re-rip them in an unprotected format; but
you lose sound quality when you do that. And it’s a
huge pain in the ass.
It really doesn’t make sense to spend money on
downloadable music when you get tracks encumbered
by crippling DRM and lossy compression for the same
price as an old-fashioned CD.
Of course, schemes to copy-protect CDs have
been around for a while, and they’re getting worse.
Now that the mainstream media has taken note, and
Sony has recalled a ton of affl icted CDs, you might
think we’ve won the fi ght against DRM. The fi ght’s not
over yet. Not by a long shot.
So, if you buy a CD encumbered with DRM, don’t
take it sitting down. Take the disc back to the place
of purchase, tell the store it’s defective, and demand
your money back. When they ask you what’s wrong
with the disc, the answer is simple. Tell them it won’t
work with your iPod.
The music industry may not listen to us, but it’ll
sure as hell listen to Best Buy.Features
MA XIMUMPC 01 / 06
Competing technologies go
mano-a-mano in a classic
Maximum PC cage match!Competing technologies go
24 VERSUS
38
MP
Challenge
Do higher bit rates really
pay off? You’d be surprised...v c
ams]
54
$300 PC
Using off-the-shelf
parts, we created the leanest PC
your lack of money can buy.v c
ams]
JANUARY 2006 MA XIMUMPC