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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He wondered why he couldn’t just sync his iPhone with the new PC.\u00c2\u00a0 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).<\/p>\n
I’ve gone on enough about it over the years, so I’ll leave it to Gizmodo<\/a> this time:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit isn’t designed simply to make it harder to steal content like straightforward copy protection\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyou thieving bastard you\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut to control exactly how and when you use media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Gizmodo goes on like that, slashing and burning its way through things that will almost certainly affect your life, like HDCP, CSS, and FairPlay.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s all that, you ask?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Gizmodo explains<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-distribution","category-law","category-tech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t