I found myself on the phone with a friend the other day, trying to explain to him why he couldn’t simply copy the music from his iPhone to his new computer. Yes, his iPhone could connect to his new computer, and he’d already paid for the music on his phone, but no, he couldn’t just copy it. He’d have to start up his old computer, copy a bunch of directories from it to the new computer, and hope that he’d followed my instructions exactly.  He wondered why he couldn’t just sync his iPhone with the new PC. That’s a good question that more and more people are facing as they discover that they’re living in a world with crippled technology that intentionally makes your life harder – DRM (Digital Rights Management).
I’ve gone on enough about it over the years, so I’ll leave it to Gizmodo this time:
Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the ass that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there’s more to it.
Straight up, you run into DRM pretty much every day. Bought music from three of the four major labels or any TV show from iTunes? Played a game on Steam? Watched a Blu-ray movie? Hello, DRM. If you wanna get technical about it, digital rights management and copy protection are two different, if similar things. Digital rights management is copy protection’s sniveling, more invasive cousin—it isn’t designed simply to make it harder to steal content like straightforward copy protection—you thieving bastard you—but to control exactly how and when you use media.
Gizmodo goes on like that, slashing and burning its way through things that will almost certainly affect your life, like HDCP, CSS, and FairPlay. What’s all that, you ask?  Gizmodo explains.
tx2vadem
Thank you for this piece! I hate DRM. It is punishment for good folks out there like myself who would prefer to buy music online. I thought I had solved the problem of the limitation on installs/copies that DRM places on you by putting all my music on an external hard drive. Come to find out when I got a new computer, I had to download all the rights again and I only have two more times I can do that. I have been so pissed that I went back to buying CDs (even though they have it too).
Why, I ask, do entertainment companies hate their customers? It must be a very deep seated loathing to visit this electronic chastity belt on us.
MB
I’d not rely on the continued existence of those rights-authorizing servers, Tx2VaDem. Remember that Microsoft – about as close as you can get to stable and assured in the tech world – screwed everyone who relied on its “Plays4Sure” music DRM. There are plenty of solutions out there to help you protect your fair-use rights (see, e.g., the Hymn Project for Apple’s FairPlay DRM).
In any event, if you must buy from major labels, try Amazon. All music downloads that they sell come in straight MP3 format, unencumbered by DRM. Doesn’t matter if Amazon collapses the day after you buy it – the file is yours.