The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan

Ten Reasons Why DRM Schemes Are Bad For Society

1. DRM promotes the premature obsolescence of devices and media. Digital formats and standards change all the time, and content that is restricted by DRM cannot be transitioned to a new format. In addition, many DRM schemes require communication with a central server to “authenticate” the product before it can be used.¹ Once these servers are no longer maintained by the provider, the content can no longer be accessed.
2. DRM significantly narrows the audience that can experience DRM-restricted content because such content can only be accessed by particular devices in particular ways, and must be sold through particular outlets.
3. DRM is easily defeated by the professional pirates who are responsible for the vast majority of relevant industry losses that DRM schemes purport to target.
4. DRM schemes tend to inconvenience honest purchasers far more than they deter piracy. As Cory Doctorow jested in a recent presentation at Microsoft’s campus,² “keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall.” Yet, in practice, casual users who legitimately purchased content are the ones who are most likely to be inconvenienced by DRM schemes.
5. Because they restrict future usage, DRM schemes are incompatible with open source and so-called “copyleft” licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons which are good for society.
6. DRM schemes and similar restrictions stifle artist creativity by putting distribution decisions solely in the hands of those distributors who have access to the restricted devices and DRM schemes.
7. DRM schemes freeze out competition by small and emerging businesses by preventing new players from distributing their content to owners of existing devices. This is great news for conglomerates with established bases but awful news for newcomers and innovation in the industry.
8. DRM severely stifles product innovation by requiring that device manufacturers make products that copyright holders want instead of the products that would be best for consumers. Could the VHS recorder (as-is) be introduced for the first time in today’s market? Of course not; the MPAA would require all sorts of restrictions and “broadcast flags.” In a world of DRM, product innovation can never reach that height again.
9. DRM schemes raise the costs of distribution. Support costs for the inevitable inconveniences that DRM restrictions cause for legitimate purchasers (see #4 above) coupled with encoding and encryption costs mean that distributors need to spend significantly more to distribute and market content to end-users.
10. DRM schemes enable content owners to force outdated business models even when newer, superior ones are available that would be preferable to consumers.

1. iTunes music, some video games, and a lot of other popular DRM-restricted content require authentication processes on each device that will access the content because they need to retrieve a unique encryption cipher. [↩]
2. See http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt for a complete transcript of Doctorow’s talk. [↩]