[cjkaminski]

I wish I could be against all DRM. Like many things in life, it's not that simple. I'm proud of Apple for successfully taking DRM out of the equation from music sales. But what about non-sales interactions?

We don't get DRM-free copies of all our music from Spotify, nor should we reasonably expect that. We are subscribing to a service that allows us access to music so long as we are paying customers. Why shouldn't there be light-touch DRM in place to keep us from flagrantly abusing the system and retaining all copies of the music after if/when we cancel our subscription?

Should we reasonably expect to be able to keep a copy of a television show that we streamed from abc.go.com? ABC makes far less money from showing us ads than if we purchased a copy from iTunes. They do this, part and parcel, because we don't get to keep a copy of the show after we're done watching.

From my perspective, DRM has no place in a "sales" relationship. We should have full usage rights whenever we buy a book, movie, or song.

DRM should exist for subscription services and ad-supported streaming. DRM should essentially serve to enforce the social and legal contract that says we are "borrowing" the books, movies, or songs for long as we have that relationship. Once that relationship is over, we can't use that stuff any more.

I suggest that we create an open-source DRM system designed to fairly protect the content creator in cases where the audience is "borrowing" the creative work (whether ad-supported or subscription).

[__david__]

> We don't get DRM-free copies of all our music from Spotify, nor should we reasonably expect that.

Why not? I use a number of internet "radio" stations that send DRM free mp3 streams to my computer (complete with ads). Some even have paid accounts that stream at a higher bitrate.

The only reason Spotify can't do that is because the recording studios act like frightened little children, scared that someone is going to take their toys away. They've (somewhat successfully) planted the meme that DRM is required or the evil pirates will just steal everything and they'll go out of business. But I just don't buy it.