Get a grip…

I fail to see how Norway of all places believes itself to be significant enough to actually demand this…

Norway pressures Apple to ditch iTunes DRM.

Norway’s top consumer advocate said today that he will ask a government court to force Apple Inc. to open the iTunes music store to users who own music players other than the iPod.

“It’s a consumer’s right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use,” said Bjorn Erik Thon, Norway’s consumer ombudsman. “ITunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence they act in breach of Norwegian law.”

I mean, never mind that it’s an American based company.  Never mind that you have the right to not use the fucking software in the first place.  I guess they’re pissed no one at Apple consulted with them first.

DRM is a pretty hot topic among the tech savvy. I agree that when you pay money for something, you should own it and be able to do what you want with it. However, before you cry foul and inform every living soul that DRM is killing music, remember this; we did this to ourselves.

DRM exists because the record labels and artists are scared to death of what happens when the music they sell leaves a physical medium and exists in the digital world. Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, etc are all prime examples of this. It doesn’t matter whether or not file sharing will spell the end of the RIAA, the point is they think it will, and they are acting in response to the things we did. If all those file sharing services had never existed, and illegal downloads of music never happened, do you think DRM would be an issue now?

There are extremes, to be sure. I hear that the game Spore shipped with a DRM scheme that limits the number of installs. That is paranoia run amok. Copy protection schemes for games is nothing new, since the file sharing concept for games has been around for a lot longer than it has for music. What I find interesting is that some copy protection schemes required a registration process in order to unlock the game and in general people didn’t have a problem with that. However, apply the same registration requirement to CD’s or MP3’s and suddenly it’s a problem, with echoes of privacy invasion attached to it.

The moral high ground for consumers is a lot thinner than you might think. I personally haven’t had a problem with DRM getting in the way. I have five computers, two ipod, and a couple of cell phones in my house. I buy music, movies, TV shows and apps from iTunes. I buy games for both the computers as well as the consoles I own. Not once has the fact that most of the things I buy coming with DRM imposed limits caused a problem.

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