Eye Phucking Toons: A DRM Story
By Daniel Miessler on July 4th, 2006: Tagged as Apple | Culture | DRM | Rants
Ok, so as of right now I am currently unable to play a good portion of my music and videos that I bought from the iTunes music store. I got to find this out, by the way, while on a plane enroute to New York…while my iPod was devoid of battery life.
When I try and open one of the affected songs or videos I am told that I need to authorize the computer to play the content. When I do so I am told that I already have 5 computers authorized, and that I will need to de-authorize one in order to continue.
Fair enough, but not really, since I only have 1 computer authorized. I figure the answer’s simple and I call my buddy Ken who explains that I simply need to reset my counter — a fact that doesn’t really bother me. So I go and sign into my account to do the reset, and guess what?
My account says I only have 3 computers registered.
Three? As in 5 minus 2? So, just to be clear, the real number is of registered computers is 1. My account thinks there are 3. And iTunes thinks there are 5. Now here’s the beauty of the situation: since I am not up to the limit of 5, I can’t reset the count and get my content to play. WTF. Seriously.
DRM becomes lame at a very specific and tangible piont, i.e. when it interferes with the ability of a legitimate user to use their content in a legitimate way. Well, Apple just hit that point. Only they didn’t just hit it; they trampled it with impunity and ridiculed its heritage.
It’s ironic that after dumping thousands of dollars into iTunes over the last couple of years and using Apple as my shining debate example of correctly implemented DRM, that I am now unable to partake of my legitmately purchased iTunes content.
And it doesn’t seem to be just me; there is a whole lot of buzz right now about ditching OS X for Ubuntu. Did stuff this just happen to a bunch of people at the same time? Did the evil of DRM just catch up with a whole group of us? WTF, Apple. WTF.
“Expect a phone call”, says Daniel, who knows that nobody at Apple is likely to ever see this post, “Expect a not-so-pleasant phone call.”