Weekly Writers: DRM And Piracy

Digital Restrictions Management

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For me, DRM means Digital Restrictions Management. DRM uses hardware or software to try and limit what a consumer can do with something they’ve bought. It stops you copying, converting or editing files, can destroy or change content, and can downgrade signals. It is always anti-consumer, and turns a purchase into a tentative loan of unclear duration.

This is part of the reason why consumers often see ebooks as secondary or poorer-quality choices, because they are more ephemeral, due to DRM. We’ve all heard tales of ebooks disappearing from Kindles when on holiday due to regional restrictions, or accounts and books being deleted by Amazon. See Microsoft’s eBook store: When this closes, your books disappear too as another example. In the digital audio arena whole swathes of music just disappeared when DRM-including formats stopped being supported. All songs bought on MSN Music and Yahoo! Music were lost forever when the services closed. Why would I buy something that can be taken away from me at any point?

“But don’t you need DRM to stop piracy? Look, this naughty site is offering my book for free!”