Year Without DRM

The problem with DRM is that it prevents me from making legitimate, personal copies. Realistically there is no way to distinguish between my making a single backup copy of a product, and making thousands of illegal copies to sell for profit. DRM assumes the worst and tries to prevent anyone from making any copies. It works, in the sense that it prevents legitimate, legal users from making backup copies. So-called "pirates" find ways to circumvent the DRM because they have a monetary interest in doing so.

There really is no good reason to prevent me from making copies of my music for my MP3 player, or to prevent me from moving the music to a new computer when the old one becomes obsolete. Except, of course, that by doing so the music industry can squeeze more money out of me, which they certainly like to do.

My answer is simple. I won't use such products.

As for DVD's, the draconian measures used to "protect" them are ineffective. They only interfere with legitimate use. As one humorous site pointed out, you can sit through the FBI warning of the legitimate movies you buy, or you can do without it altogether with the bootlegged version. So much for DRM.

I'm always willing to make an exception for DRM systems that don't work (such as DVDs as mentioned by crashsystems).

I've also bought a few copy-protected CDs that were easy to copy.