Quote:
Originally Posted by odamizu
How did music end up being DRM-free?
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One thing that helped was that you can very easily buy a CD and rip it. Sony tried to prevent this, which became a
huge PR desaster for them when it turned out they used a root kit on their audio CDs that severely interfered with the user's computer. Plus, copy-protection violated audio CD specifications, so copy-protected CDs tended not to work on some CD players. Plus, you can easily rip
any audio by digitizing any audio device's output -- just connect a digital recorder (like, a computer with a sound card) to line out or, if there isn't any, to the player's headphone connector. So, everybody could easily create non-DRM'd audio files of anything they wanted. With ebooks (as with videos), they think they have better cards, with DRM written into the specs, selling their own reading devices, and "ripping" being a considerable effort. Still, I don't think that DRM makes sense even from the vendors' POV -- I buy ebooks from Amazon, for instance, because I can easily remove their DRM, otherwise I wouldn't buy any. But for this very reason -- their DRM doesn't bother those who object to it -- they don't feel pressure from disgruntled buyers, or non-buyers. This silly "we have DRM but you can remove it" situation may go on for quite a while, I'm afraid. Let's just hope they'll give it up one day, without first trying out some new technical or legal crap.