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Digital Rights Management Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better

As part of Google's announcement last week of its online video store, where it will sell content from CBS, the National Basketball Association, and others, the firm said it has developed its own DRM software to prevent people from distributing downloads in violation of its partners' copyrights.

But this isn't going over well in some camps. Among other things, people are saying, we don't really need another DRM system that doesn't play nicely with anyone else's. And sure, they're right about that--but the need to protect online content isn't going away anytime soon, and that need will grow and morph as different forms of content are delivered by various types of middlemen like Google. Yahoo, Apple, and others will no doubt soon join the DRM party as they gear up to deliver video content.

The plain fact is that some companies expect to make money off of their content, and they expect their content will remain their property. They want to do things like count the number of users who are enjoying their wares, and I can't really blame them.

Now, do I *enjoy* using said DRM wares as a customer? Of course not. How do you talk to the "online music-subscription service in the sky" to explain that you're not really trying to 'steal' an extra copy of that song but that, see, your computer's hard drive crashed and you got a new one and you're just trying to replace what you've already paid for? Or to the CD that you're only trying to make another copy because some idiot decided to use it as a flying disc to amuse the cat mostly since you forgot to label the disc correctly? (Not that these scenarios have ever actually happened, but they could.)

And as a member of a family with several different brands of music players, our formats are mostly incompatible and we can't use the same music service, which costs us extra. I'm not complaining--that was our choice and, to be honest I'm not all that upset about not having my kids' music on my iPod. (I'm sure that palpable relief goes in both directions.)

Point is, as a consumer I loathe the incompatibility and inconvenience of DRM. But as a business person, I understand why it's needed.

Most online services and entertainment-related concerns, I'm hoping, learned lessons from Sony about what *not* to do with DRM, sure, but there aren't a lot of models yet about how to do DRM right. I'm thinking we're going to have to face a lot more attempts at this from companies like Google that are in the middle of online-content-hungry consumers on one side and the people who create said content and expect to be fairly compensated on the other side.

There are going to be more attempts at this DRM business--and it will be different for different movie studios and music companies, and so on--before the industry gets it right. There will probably be a standard at some point, but it may take a decade to get there. In the meantime, if we consumers get sick of it all, there's always the possibility of listening to vinyl records on the old Victrola, as my dad used to call the manual record player.

Where do you think DRM is heading? Please comment below.

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