Simon’s Blog

I’m sure you know what digital rights management (aka DRM) is all about in the context of music and video. DRM is the name given to technologies that try to limit the ways in which consumers can enjoy music and movies. However, there’s a fundamental problem with DRM - it doesn’t work. It can’t work. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. This is simply one of those things that is fundamental. And aside from those fundamental issues, DRM is bad for consumers.

Over the last ten years, many have fallen into the trap of believing that DRM can be made to work; that technological solutions could somehow be brought to bear that would address the challenges. However, because the problems are fundamental, it can never happen. This hasn’t prevented millions (if not billions) of dollars being wasted developing a huge variety of DRM technologies though.

Today, there are still many people who don’t understand why DRM can never work - particularly people in the music and film industries. Perhaps it’s not surprising - this is pretty technical stuff. However, a software company like Microsoft really should get this - it goes right to their core business.

This week, at long last, two companies - Apple and EMI - signed the death warrant for DRM. It had to happen; it’s always just been a matter of when. It seems that Microsoft, though, couldn’t see it coming. The company has been spending time and money investing in DRM for both its PC products (like Vista) and also in its currently failing Zune platform. So, instead of being focused on delivering value to consumers, Microsoft has been wasting time developing technologies that can never work, and are bad for consumers. These are serious errors of judgement.

Now is a good time for any company involved DRM of music and video to take stock of what the Apple/EMI announcement means. As of this week, it’s debatable whether any new music and video format can succeed if it’s tied to DRM.