I find it very puzzling to see that people are still not being informed at how DRM is actually pretty flawed in its design. Take a look at a previous post on my other blog:
I think before music companies try and seriously tackle the piracy that’s been going on for years they’re going to have to look at the current problems with the industry. If you look up ‘ripping DRM off WMA’ on Google, there are so many websites that send you to links to programs that will do this for you very easily.
Yes, you still have to pay for the good ones, but what’s going to stop that person from looking it up? There used to be this law that prevented Google from showing these entries but, that has since passed. If the governments were able to shut these sites down, you would help keep programmers from having to rescript their program from accepting it. Really, these serial codes are everywhere, even sites including LiveJournal, WordPress, and they even have IRC communities for such thing.
And you know what? It doesn’t really help that Napster has their to go option as a seven day trial. When a user signs up, they just ask for a credit card or PayPal account (which you can add different e-mail addresses to), and their address. These DRM files can easily be put into a program such as SoundTaxi or Tunebite which will convert these WMAs into MP3. There is no limit of how much you can download (I was able to download 45 gigabytes worth, but I own all this music already in other formats including CDs and iTunes bought) so this eventually will become a huge problem for the music industry.
There are probably many people who sign up for multiple accounts just to do this. I wish Napster would just stop their trials as it’s already destroying their yearly revenue. This is why iTunes has a bigger base of customers and companies teaming up with them, they’re using a type of media that you HAVE to buy to use/play because there’s nothing embedded to stop your usage at any given date like there is in Napster which can easily be overwritten.
Actually, I hope Napster reconsiders getting involved with the MP3 portable player industry and closes their doors because it’s just not going to work. It doesn’t help that they used to be a huge piracy company either. But, it goes to show that even if Napster does close down, people are going to go search somewhere else like Limewire and torrent sites which have now become popular for those trying to find albums.
Note: I do not encourage the downloading of music illegally. It is the wrongest thing you can do in life because you can basically destroy someone’s career and slowly make them disappear. Before you give your friend that copy of Kanye West’s new single, you might want to think again and tell them to go buy it off iTunes. It’s only $0.99 after all!
