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June 11, 2024

The Sordid History of Digital Rights Management

So, anyone who has bought my ebooks might have noticed that they are DRM free…mostly. Sometimes a distributor will slap the technology on my books unwanted and unasked.

I have strong feelings about DRM. In my opinion, it’s bad. In every form I have ever encountered except correctly done watermarking…with the emphasis on correctly done.

I just came across something about an ill-advised Sony DRM scheme where their software literally disabled your computer’s ability to copy CDs when you played a Sony CD. All CDs. Including, you know, your own CDs. The malware was hard to remove. And it was emphatically malware.

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