Carl Longino - Why DRM Will Kill Mobile Music

Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing points out this insightful post by Carl Longino.

What's funny about all of this is that the DRM doesn't work anyway. The latest Foo Fighters CD features similar copy protection, but that didn't stop it from topping the file-sharing charts. Not only that, you've got bands and labels telling people how to circumvent the DRM -- the Dave Matthews Band tells buyers to rip the CD through Windows Media Player, then burn a copy with it, then rip the copy into iTunes to get the music onto an iPod. Just so we're clear: you've got one of the artists with DRMed CDs telling people how to work around the DRM and make "unprotected" MP3 files of the songs, with one of the labels giving the same advice. Why bother having DRM if you're going to tell people how to get around it? If that's not a tacit admission of its ineffectiveness, I don't know what is.