Here's an interesting article from CNet -
Why the Zune will help kill DRM
It seems that Zune doesn't interoperate with other MS DRM systems. It's amazing that MS can't even be compatible with itself when incompatibility is one of the consumers' genuine grips with DRM. I personally avoid "encumbered" media, because I want to play my media on a range of devices without too much hassle. My preferred choice for music, for example, is an old fashioned CD (which usually comes out of it's case once to get ripped and then goes back on the shelf!) There are some interesting attempts to make DRMed media portable (e.g. Coral and Marlin) but I think that the big vendors will scupper these initiatives. They can't help "embracing and extending" standards for their own competitive advantage and in the hope that they can become the de facto standard.
I think there are three big things to understand about DRM -
- It's hard to make it portable and hassle-free for the consumer. It's almost impossible to make it respect traditional "fair use".
- It's impossible to stop people hacking DRM without the use of hardware support e.g. smartcards or "trustworthy computing". That's why the DCMA and EUCD have such ridiculously harsh punishments for attempting to circumvent copy protection mechanisms.
- Digital distribution will fundamentally disrupt the nature of the content supply chain, whereas today's DRM systems are really designed to preserve the "old" economics ie. hit based, expensive content distributed via middlemen who all take a large cut.
So, how will this all end? I think that consumers will resist DRM systems unless they are hassle-free, respect fair use and the content is priced to reflect the lower costs of online distribution. I don't think that the traditional content industries will hit any of those targets, but their are plenty of people waiting in the wings with new business models that don't reply on high cost "premium content". For example, advertising funding, low cost unprotected content, user generated and prosumer generated content.
