Don Marti's posted a scorching, brilliant essay on DRM and why it won't work and why it doesn't work and why we should stop trying to make it work. This is one of the best pieces on the subject I've ever read, and I'm something of a connoisseur:
In this crazy business of ours, every once in a while, companies go into a frenzy to sell technology that doesn't work to customers who don't want it. In the 1990s, did customers want overpriced UNIX from bickering vendors or stable-any-day-we-promise Windows NT? Sorry, neither one works for us. Support Linux, please. Or on-line services. AOL or Compuserve? We'll take the Internet, thanks.
The other hyped-up use for DRM is at the office. Deploy DRM and you can keep employees from forwarding embarrassing e-mail to the media. That sounds like the answer to network-illiterate managers' prayers, but if it's juicy enough to leak, it's juicy enough to write down and retype. Bill Gates of Microsoft, in an interview with gizmodo.com, tried to pitch DRM using the example of an HIV test result, which is literally one bit of information. If you hired someone untrustworthy enough to leak that but unable to remember it, you don't need DRM, you need to fix your hiring process.
(Thanks, Seth!)
