Apple's e-books to be fettered by our old friend, FairPlay DRM

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More


Looks like Apple didn’t learn its lesson with the whole iTunes DRM thing. I suppose that they might consider some things worth DRM-ing and some not, but I think it’s more along the lines of they’ll do it whenever they think they can get away with it. And they seem to think that’s the case with their new e-book store, which will sell books laced with delicious FairPlay DRM.

Apparently they think that a different medium somehow deserves different treatment. I don’t think they understand that e-books, movies, music, and whatever else gets sold on a digital marketplace are all completely interchangeable as far as DRM strategy goes: you can do it, but people won’t like it, and eventually you’ll have to relent. And the fun part is that the DRM will not be effective — since the people who want to circumvent the DRM will always find a way to do so, and those who don’t want to do it wouldn’t try in the first place. So… who’s it for?

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