You know, it really always amazes me how people (especially people involved in this industry) do not seem to thing that Digital Rights Management is a good thing. Personally, I love it.

For instance: When I deploy a software project, I would really like a good to specify who and under what conditions can get access to the source. I do not want to refox it and make it as hard as possible for everyone to get to it. I want to be able to control that some people do have the rights to get to it, and I want to make sure that for some other people, it is completely impossible (not just hard) to get to it. DRM is the key to enabling this scenario.

Anothre example: We are currently working on a digital publishing platform (which we will release relatively shortly), and one of the things I have always wanted to do is give people access to thousands of books for a cheap fee. These books they would otherwise have to buy, but in my vision, people could get these books out of a digital library and return them when they do not need them anymore. They could get a certain number of books at all times, depending on their membership level. It would be just like going to your local library, except that there are a lot more books and they are the kinds of books you want, and you can do it from your home.

But that of course only works if there is some way to make sure that a book that is taken from the library doesn't imediately replicate itself a million times. The model can only work if its integrity is guaranteed, and that only works with DRM.

IMO, DRM is one of the most important advances to come along in years. It will enable new ways of doing things that are ultimately much less expensive for the consumer.

Does it suck that some of the things you could do (and steel?) in the past, you cannot do anymore? Sure. It's just like it is annoying that DVDs are regionally encoded for instance. But by and large, I see all of this as a very very good thing.


Markus