[mdlug] O.T. Another Vista horror story

[Raymond McLaughlin]

Clinton V. Weiss wrote:

> Because of this behavior, I never truly understood what
> people have against DRM, as it has never directly affected me.

I've always understood DRM this way, "Western civilization was nice
while it lasted." My reasoning is this: one of the harbingers of modern
western civilization was the translation of the Bible into the common
tongues, particularly English. The powers that were in those days wanted
to suppress this for perfectly justified (in their own opinion) reasons.
Prior to the printing press they were able to do so, afterwards, there
were too many copies to hunt down. Had those powers been able to
instantly make all those printed Bibles unreadable they, of course,
would have. But they couldn't, and so the forces leading to mass
literacy and enlightenment began to gain momentum.

In our age, as electronic media are replacing printed media, the
mechanisms of DRM hand this very power to ill-defined authorities. Even
if you accept the enforcement of copy rights as a justification for DRM,
implementing it implies far greater trust than I have for any
authorities I can think of. It is not, in my opinion, a start down a
slippery slope, but rather a step off a sheer cliff face.

Under a DRM regime, asserting your right to read, which is supposedly
implicit in the right of free expression, devolves literally to asking
permission to read several million times per second. With one "NO"
vetoing millions of yeses.

But perhaps I exaggerate.

> After reading this I am very grateful for not buying into DRM'ed
> music, and even more grateful that it hasn't affected me.  What a
> *expletive* pain in the *expletive* it is just to transfer your own
> *expletive* files from one *expletive* computer to another *expletive*
> computer.  Of course, the expletives are out of respect for the author
> and the hassle he is enduring.  What's sad, is he isn't done yet.
> He'll have more computers in the future, and unless he re-purchases
> all of his music, he must go through all of this again.

The "final solution" to his problem that they (MS tech Cathy and he)
came up with was to burn audio CDs from his tunes (at the first
opportunity) and then rip mp3's from them. *Lots* of CDs.

> Here's to finally understanding the pain that DRM is, and hoping to
> never have to deal with it myself *raises coffee*

Here here. (Or is that hear hear?)

Raymond McLaughlin