DRM

When I came across this article about the Amazon Kindle e-book reader this week, I had to let out a deep sigh.

For those of you that don't have time to read it, a quick summary: Customer buys e-book. Publisher has specified limit on the amount of times book can be downloaded. Customer exceeds limit. Customer has to buy e-book again, despite having already paid for it. Customer extremely unhappy.

The whole Digital Rights Management issue is frustrating to me, because the problems seem so glaringly obvious to absolutely everyone on the planet, with the apparent exception of the industry people who have the power to do something about it. And nobody seems to be learning from past mistakes. It's really very simple, so allow me to lay it out in black and white.

Book publishers, film studios and record labels: by adding invasive, annoying Digital Rights Management to your content, you are pushing legitimate customers away and making the problem of piracy far, far worse.

I'll leave you with this comic from XKCD, which seems to sum things up perfectly.