Not that you didn't know that already, but a brief at ArsTechnica has some pretty damning evidence from Hollywood itself: If we believe Ronald Grover's sources in his BusinessWeek article of last week, the problem is liberal DRM and not piracy, and this is a startling admission. According to him, an unnamed studio executive said that a major reason why studios weren't jumping on board with the iTunes Store and other similar services is that their DRM is too lax. "[Apple's] user rules just scare the heck out of us." It's not piracy that's the concern, it's their ability to control how you use the content you purchase.
Digital Rights Management. It's a system that says who and which of their devices can play DRM media. It's been under the guise of protecting against pirates and keeping people honest. Fair enough. The problem is this system circumvents fair use. They do not want me to be able to lend a CD to a friend for them to listen to. Never mind that there's more evidence to support people purchasing something if they've seen it. Now, I am certainly against piracy, as it is stealing. However, most people have an issue where they're equating fair use with piracy. They don't want me to be able to lend a CD to my friends because they *might* copy it. I'm not saying people don't, but people generally are like "that's awesome" and then run out to the store to buy a copy. I'm not against reasonable measures to prevent piracy. However, things like Sony's rootkit debacle and the Starforce anti-copy protection that damage peoples systems is inexcusable. I'm more than happy to pay for a good product, but don't rape my system because of a few people. This is why you have the RIAA taking dead grandmothers, who did not own PC, much less an internet connection, to court for downloading Britney Spears songs.
