Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
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The reason that they are focusing on these DRM technologies is that a lot of record lables and movie studios are worried that someone is going to crack software DRM and you are going to end up with users that have the entire Napster library downloaded to disk, that can then crack it. I can't say I blame them. They could potentialy lose hundreds of thousands of dollars per person for anyone who cracks DRM on a wide scale. Imagine if there was an EXE I could run that would batch processes and remove DRM from my Rhapsody files. I could run it tonight, and tomorrow morning have robbed them of close to $100,000. That's just me in 12hrs time. Give it a week, and Rhapsody after half their userbase no longer needs the service because all their files are unlocked. No thanks.
There are some leaked rumored screens out that Netflix is trying to come out with their own DRM movie service. They probably won't do it until some kind of hardware DRM is available.
The posbilities of DRM and broadband are endless. Imagine when fiber hits homes and you can watch any show anytime, or instant pick a movie from a library 5 times the size of your local Blockbuster.
What, exactly, is the problem with DRM if you aren't using pirated material? The only reason we even give it a second thought is because piracy became "mainstream" and accepted. Never should have been.