Arthur D. Little on DRM
by Volker Weber
The media debate regarding DRM the past few years has pitted two groups against each other: End users accused of wanting a free lunch (e.g., through file sharing) and content owners who sometimes have been overambitious in building fences around their rights.
Looks like they are missing the largest group. Users who want to buy stuff without being harassed by DRM. Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
Comments
Why do people want a free lunch? Simply: because if they buy their lunch, they can only put it in the special lunch box that's approved by the lunch seller. They can't share their lunch with someone else, they can't put it in the fridge to store it and they can't skip the vegetables and eat only the nice stuff.
In such a scenario, the only question is whether to have a free lunch (steal it) or whether to have no lunch at all and drink some more tea.
Daniel Haferkorn, 2010-05-31
