Ed Felton has a good article at Freedom to Tinker on the incongruity of music industry technologists who are trying to create a "transparent and universal" system that protects copyrights at the same time.

The whole point of DRM technology is to prevent people from moving music usefully from point A to point B, at least sometimes. To make DRM work, you have to ensure that not just anybody can build a music player -- otherwise people will build players that don't obey the DRM restrictions you want to connect to the content. DRM, in other words, strives to create incompatibility between the approved devices and uses, and the unapproved ones. Incompatibility isn't an unfortunate side-effect of deficient DRM systems -- it's the goal of DRM.

From Freedom to Tinker: A Perfectly Compatible Form of Incompatibility
Referenced Thu Apr 15 2004 09:08:22 GMT-0600