Cory Doctorow, a bigwig at the EFF (among many other things), has a good series of commentary on the effect of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on your use of consumer electronics and entertainment content (movies, music, etc.). For those of you that aren’t as familiar with this technology, DRM is touted by the content industry (movie studios, record companies, etc… heck, they’re the same companies) as a tool to fight piracy. The idea is that it makes it tough to copy media onto your computer, for example, which will keep things from ending up on the internet. This sounds good, but it’s it’s completely false. DRM is mostly about controlling competition and boxing consumers into behaviors that the studios are comfortable with (because they already know them) by giving the studios control of technology innovation. If a technology comes along that you or I will love but might make the studios cut down on their profit margins, they can simply make it impossible to legally play the content on that particular device.

For example, studios didn’t like that Europeans could buy American movies on VHS before the movies came out in Europe. Or that Americans could buy foreign VHS movies for less than the cost of buying them in the U.S. So, they created DRM on the new DVD standards that prevents “authorized” DVD players from playing DVDs from another region. Mind you, I can still make a bit for bit copy of the files on the DVD and play them in another authorized DVD player… the DRM doesn’t stop that. It just makes it harder for consumers to get content they want.

My recent experience buying Indian mythology comics proves illustrative. Those comics sell for 4-5 dollars a piece here in the U.S. I was able to buy 13 plus a special edition 3 volume hardbound edition of the Mahabharata for something like US$50 including shipping. If I wanted to bulk order 15 Indian DVDs for my parents, I probably couldn’t play them on my parent’s DVD player. Why is that OK?

If you want a more insidious example, Doctorow wrote earlier about how cable companies are going to delete Six Feet Under recordings after 2-4 weeks if you use a cable company provided DVR (a Tivo is a DVR, click the link at left for more information). Don’t go on vacation if you like Time Warner shows, I guess…