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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

I hate to say it but all this means is that DRM now registers as a bad thing to the general public. So they're cutting ties.

But if the music industry feels they need to bring DRM back they'll surely do it. They'll just bring it back dubbed with a new, media friendly name.

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But if it quacks like a duck...

They may bring it back but DRM has a fundamental HCI problem, it annoyed legitimate users, and got in the way of whatever goals they want (i.e. Hey lets take this song by toddler likes to dance to and make a music video etc.)

That's certainly why DRM has become a bad word. All I'm saying is the article seems to imply this is somehow an admission that they were wrong. When in fact it's just the opposite. It's setting the stage for it's eventual return under a new name if they should ever feel the need to bring it back.

Because if they do bring it back part of the push will be "we realize DRM was bad but this new thing fixes the problems." In order to make that statement they need to disown DRM now.

I agree. Journalists (and through them, the general public) are smart enough to recognize DRM when they see it now. The music industry could (and, lets be honest, probably will) try to raise it from the dead at some point. Whatever they do try to pin it on will never succeed though.

Actually, I think that we should give it a user-parsable name, quite like Microsoft did when they switched renamed Palladium (easy to remember, easy to target in the media) to NGSCB (technical gibbersish, scary for non techies), but in reverse.

It was very effective for Microsoft. Palladium was all over the place in tech media, NGSCB got much less coverage.

I remember seeing the phrase "infected by DRM" on Slashdot by it didn't get much traction.

I think that labelling a DRMed work as "locked" would be quite effective.

The only hope for DRM would have been if people never expected better. "This is just how it is."

Of course, through both unauthorized channels (for copy-restricted content) and normal usage (of personal and free content), people now know better. That means under any name, DRM will appear broken and backward.

There will still be novel and annoying attempts at DRM, but essentially, this battle has been won.

> There will still be novel and annoying attempts at DRM, but essentially, this battle has been won.

The battle may have been won for music, but movies already come DRM-enabled, and ebook publishers are pushing DRM like crazy.

This is far from over, since the replication and distribution of digital media costs zero, and this effectively invalidates old business models.

Hard-copy books are still selling (I for one think it's easier on the eyes than glaring in a laptop's screen), but throw in a comfortable ebook reader and ebooks that can be shared with friends, and you've got yourself a business-model killer.

I think this is inevitable, but more time has to pass before newer business models will emerge, and until then they'll keep circumventing the natural evolution of technology.

I don't know how to feel about this ... for one my rights are violated (you end up not owning your copy) and sharing with friends / making a backup are prohibited actions that turn you into a thief. On the other hand I feel bad about content creators (having negative feelings about publishers though because of their policies).

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