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DRM is not about "Rights" it is about RESTRICTIONS!
All DRM does is restrict what you can do with what you purchase. If you buy a regular CD there is nothing from stopping you from playing it in your house, car, office or lending it to your friend and letting them play it too. (NOTE: I'm not going into the moral or legal arguements about copying this CD, this is about where I can use this product I paid for)
The exact same is true for a book, there is no restriction on where I can read this book or what I can do with it after I finish reading it - I can lend to others, re-sell it or even give it away if I wish.
Enter DRM, I no longer have any of these rights, instead the content distributors (this is very rarely the authors/artists themselves) now place restrictions on what I can do with my music or ebooks. They tell me where I can play it, sometimes even how many times I can play it, and if you look at how Apple has changes ITunes, they also usually have ways in place to add further restrictions without you consent!
When ITunes first came out, I could stream music to 10 other computers, this was changed to 5 after I had purchased music from ITunes - the "contract" I agreed to when I purchased the music has been changed without my consent!
Also look at DVDs, can you honestly tell me that region locking - a from of DRM - has anything to do with preventing me from copying a DVD? I'm currently living in Japan and have quite a collection of DVDs that are region 2, if I return to Australia to live nd buy a new DVD player (Japan is NTSC and 110V, Australia PAL and 240V) I can no longer play the DVDs because Australia is region 4. This has nothing to do with pirating DVDs, in fact the only way I can watch them is to use quasi-legal software to copy these DVDs and remove the region locking.
What right do you have to play your legally purchased ITunes music on an IRiver should your IPod get broken? None - DRM takes away your rights and makes media temporary, so unless they keep the prices really low so that people don't mind throwing it away when they get a new player/reader, all DRM does is press people into looking for shady ways to keep what they paid for.
Stu
P.S Do you know how long it takes for an DRM free verison of the latest ITunes hit to become available after it's release via ITunes?
180 seconds on average
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