It's a sunday night, SwitchBlade's bored and there's nothing to do... What better than a ramble on a nice touchy subject.

Digital Rights Management, or DRM is another of the "wonderful" inventions by the American moneygrabbers: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Both of whom seem to think that computers are the "only" threat to their profits and will remain so. Apparently MP3s and CD burners cost them millions of $ each year, also apparently blank tapes and mini discs don't cost them anything (if it does they seem to have forgotten.

In most sophisticated countries there are various laws (the biggie being Copyright law) that govern what is your property and what isn't. With most products you buy the item and you own it and can choose what you do with it. With information (in the form of computer data, music, video, books) you are able to make copies of the items you have. In the UK you have the right of fair-use of items which allows you to make copies for educational, personal, and private use. The same "fair-use" rights are implemented in various ways in other countries, some countries don't care and you can do what the hell you like with the information on the media.

Now back to DRM, the idea of this is that the file contains some form of data that stops it being copied and duplicated, this is only implementable on computers, although the moneygrabbers seem to think that anyone with a computer is also a pirate. This could be seen as akin to someone with ciggarette papers as bein a drug baron. Dispite the fact that we aren't all budding law breakers, it has been decided that we are and DRM is being made to take our rights away in favour of the recording company, and the draconian laws of America. With DRM implemented, you won't be allowed to convert videos you buy so you can watch them on your 9210, or audio files to a format more suitable for the playback. You won't be able to back up your videos, or make CD copies of music to listen to in the car rather than take the relatively expensive originals with you.

When I was a kid, my music collection consisted almost exclusively of copied tapes, as me and my mates would club together to get some albums and blank tapes and get what we liked and have a copy each, we "went quarters" as it were. Tapes listened to in the car were almost always copies owing to car stereo's tendancies to eat tapes. Nowadays, the only copied CDs I have are for listening to in the car mostly cos the bloody stereo, dispite costing a fortune, scratches the discs and has rendered one £15 cd unplayable already. As a kid most of my videos were on blanks taped from telly, now I have a healthy collection of videos on both VHS and DVD.

Now for the "evil" word, MP3. I have relatively few MP3s compared to some friends, probably about 1.2GB (enough to fill 2 CDs with). These are mostly stuff I can't buy anymore and the odd track ripped from a CD to sit in playlists a day long so I can listen to my music. I have the Gretchen Goes To Nebraska album by King's X as MP3s that I downloaded from the net because my original CD had an unfortunate accident with a shelf and now only one track plays, also others are MP3s I downloaded of tapes I own legally. With DRM none of these MP3s would exist, the legal copies I have of stuff I paid for would not be possible (and seen as illegal in a foreign country who's law effects me for some unfathomable reason), and the stuff I can't buy would remain only in my memory for as long as I can manage to remember it.

Another "evil" word is DivX, I must confess to owning lots of DivX files burned to various CDs and actually of dubious legality. Firstly there is a collection of films, relased at the cinema that are bloody good, but not available to buy, so I make do with a DivX copy off of the net until it hits the streets in VHS or DVD form for my purchasement. Along side these are a rather large collection of fan-subbed Anime's, these are unfortunately not available in any language but the original Japanese, and until I am able to speak Japanese, there's not much point me buying a copy on VHS/DVD just to watch the pretty pictures. Hence I make do with DivX files, subtitled by fans, until an official copy with english subtitles hits the streets over here. Again under DRM neither of these uses would be available to me.

Now to show that I'm not a fool who is blind to the real world, yes I understand that there are people out there pirating media illegaly using the techniques above and making a fortune from it. Unfortunately I can't see how, a VHS cassette has far greater quality than anything but a high encoding DivX file, and then for the hastle it's easier to buy it on VHS or DVD. As for MP3s, they sound shite, as do CDs to a lesser extent, anyone buying MP3s or CDs burned from MP3s (as pirates generally are) are absolute muppets with what must be very poor hearing.

Now to point out the pointlessness of it all, DRM is only an irritation, yes it's a pain to get the CDs copied to go in the car, or files converted for a 9210, but it's not gonna stop you. Anything that can be played back can be recorded, for example, your DRM protected CD has to output an audio stream which is easilly recorded by say my mini disc player to listen to my CDs on my walkman, and the output can just as easilly go to a computer, or tape recorder. As for video, the signal has to go to the telly, and via whatever method you use, be it SCART, RF, S-VHS etc, it's possible to get a macrovision disabled VHS recorder so you can tape the files, or even simpler to record them on a PC that would ignore macrovision in the first place (macrovision being an old old system involving a signal being sent to VHS recorders to cause a quality loss when trying to copy a paid for VHS tape).

So what is DRM gonna achieve.... NOTHING, that's what, a big fat hairy nothing. It's not gonna stop the pirates because they aren't dumb enough to be stopped by it. All it'll do is take away the right of fair use enjoyed by Joe Average and annoy him at the same time. There is no way they can make a system to stop pirates doing what they do, and I feel that both the RIAA and MPAA are very naive if they think that DRM is gonna stop anyone. So far both M$ and Real Networks have produced a DRM system for their own file formats. The way I see it, you are only going to be able to downloads the files for a couple of quid less than you can buy it on a CD/DVD/VHS and the quality will be better for your couple of quid, either way the artist behind the work you are buying is still getting the same measly crap sum whichever method you buy. Is the DRM gonna change the world, no it's just gonna make more people hate the RIAA and MPAA, and in the process America too as these companies reinforce the image that America is a money grabbing dictatorship where the companies with the most cash get the laws their way (just like M$ in the anti-trust trial).

Note = These are not necessarily the views held by Rafe Blandford the owner of this site, or of other members of the Admin team. These are only the views of SwitchBlade who is an opinionated bastard, and couldn't care less who is offended by his opinions.