Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a bad idea.  This isn’t the first time I’ve said so.  I get that creators need to be paid for their work.  I like to buy my media.  I have subscriptions to Netflix and Zip.ca to watch movies. I buy my music on iTunes and I have a subscription to Audible for audiobooks.   If I really wanted to screw the creators of media I wouldn’t pay for all these services would I?   So why is it that as a paying customer I get screwed?  Why is it that I can’t use media from the services I pay for on the devices I own?

I recently bought a Playbook.   Software developers have been slow to develop for the Playbook.  As a result of this slow development I am not able to watch Netflix, listen to Audible or listen to music downloaded from iTunes.   I don’t blame RIM for this problem.  This isn’t a media player problem.  The Playbook comes with media players.  The problem is with the DRM.   There are Open Standards format for the media I want to consume it’s just that digital rights management prevents me from using the Open Standards.  Music and audiobooks can be played as MP3, movies can be played as MP4 or a streaming format.

Let’s get something clear, if I wanted to steal movies, music or books I’d already be doing so but I’m not, not yet anyway.  When will content creators wake up to the reality tbat DRM causes more revenue leakage than it prevents by forcing consumers to break the DRM in order to consume the media they have paid for?

From where I stand DRM sucks!