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Originally Posted by penforhire
Perhaps the time will come when your content is no longer "yours" and, in the cloud, it is continually scanned to autheticate your right to access it under whatever identity structure is current (say passwords for you biometric Luddites, lol). Some form of that cloud-future is coming down the pipe. We can and will fight it but I expect us to lose. The benefits to content producers are too great. Not just authentication control but also revision control. Change the central file or program and it gets rolled out instantly and effortlessly because we're all using essentially "dumb" terminals, requiring a constant internet connection. Those require minimal local storage and processing power.
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If it comes to this kind of DRM-on-everything, I will simply stop buying things and turn into a crotchety old man. I'll either go without, or pirate the stuff if I get desperate enough. Because buying with DRM isn't "buying". It's renting. And I'm not paying purchase price for a rental.
I avoid DRM at all costs. If I can buy something without it, I do. I'm passing on the sequel to my favorite game in almost a decade, Dragon Age II, due to the excessive call-home-to-EA or Steam DRM. I did the same thing with Civilization V and its Steam DRM. In comparison, I bought Civ4 on release, and each expansion. I bought the first Dragon Age on release also. So they lost my $50 for each game. I refuse to buy a game that requires calling to a remote server to approve me playing it. It's ridiculous. I'm being treated as a criminal for buying it legit.
I refuse to buy any DRM'd videos, or music, or books that requires authentication of any sort beyond the physical product itself. I rarely bend this if the money savings is substantial or time is critical (bought a few ebooks for class). I will buy DRM'd content only at very low rental-type prices - sub $10 for games, sub $2 or so for ebooks.
To me, a physical book is a superior product to a DRM'd ebook. No DRM to annoy me, no loaning restrictions, no device restrictions, I can resell it, no worrying about technological change if I want to read it 20 years from now.