35 Days Against DRM

This is interesting. Defective by Design is hosting 35 days against DRM, during which they will pick a product that everyone should boycott in order to speak their mind about how much they think DRM sucks.

Their first product, sadly enough, is the new Macbook.

Why am I not surprised that they’ve targeted Apple?

It seems like Apple is a fair target for anyone these days. The Apple hatred has almost gotten as bad as the Windoze hatred that was so popular a few years ago, before Steve Jobs came back to Apple and made Apple cool again. Sometimes, I think that geeks really do just want to be different and they don’t care what they have to do to accomplish that.

I understand that Apple has pandered to the DRM gods, but they had to do this in order to be successful. No one else was even willing to consider negotiating with them, the fact that Apple had the foresight to go there and say, “Hey, we have the most popular MP3 player on the planet. We’re willing to work with you, but you’re going to have to do things our way.” is a damn sight better than what anyone else was doing with products similar to iTunes at the time.

As far as their display adapter goes, I’d like to know how many of you have tried to hook up a windows machine to a television and if you realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to get it going. I want to be able to plug in a cable and have the thing work. This is not possible under current windows technology. First you have to go change the display settings, then tell it which screen you want it to display on, and if you get lucky, your media player software (which is HEAVILY encumbered by DRM under Windows Vista) will cooperate with you and not just start kicking out sound, without a picture.

If Apple can give me that, screw you PC.

Regardless of the rant… I am all for the cause. DRM sucks. I don’t buy music or videos from iTunes, I buy discs and rip them. If I’m not kicking it old school, I buy digitally from Amazon, or direct from the artist, and by God, I love my copy of In Rainbows. It was worth every penny that I paid for it, and you sorry sods that didn’t pay for it deserve to have someone give you a hot foot!