notthatwillsmith

My old friend Ken Fisher at Ars Technica just posted an editorial where he states that “DRM’s sole purpose is to maximize revenue by minimizing your rights and then selling them back to you.” The thing is, that’s just half the story. Sure, the content providers want their buck, but so do the hardware vendors.

The thing that’s always puzzled me about the rise of DRM is that the hardware vendors used to side with consumers, rather than content providers. In the early 80s, the movie studios sued Sony to prevent the introduction of Betamax recorders. Sony went to court to defend the consumer’s right to use content however they want–as long as they don’t violate copyright. Thus was the doctrine of fair use born.

Ken very clearly outlined what the content providers get from DRM, but he missed the hardware side of the story. After all, why would the hardware vendors voluntarily include any technology in their products that will annoy their customers and cause potential support calls? It doesn’t make sense, until you look at the hardware vendors little side businesses–music and movie distribution.

In order to convince the content providers to let hardware vendors distribute media, hardware vendors had to include DRM tech in their hardware and software products. But media distribution is a relatively minor sideline for a hardware company–the content providers take the vast majority of money from every sale on iTunes. The real benefit for hardware vendors is that their DRM schemes lock consumers into their hardware platform.

If you’ve bought all your music from the iTunes Music Store, you’re not going to suddenly buy a player that won’t play the music in your collection, will you?