DRM is evil: why?

[Merrion]

Can anyone explain to me (ideally without any religious zealotry type language) why DRM is evil per se? It seems to be an assumed truth for the developer community but I don't really get the big fear...

[gigemboy]

Because it limits the devices that you can play back your music on. You can only play back your DRM protected files on the players that have that ability built in, and it decreases the portability of your music. Its even worse when you start using proprietary formats, like WMA or Itunes. You have a standard MP3 with no protection, you can play that back on any sort of MP3 player you want. Not the case with DRM protected files, tis why it is all a bunch of baloney

[Kasracer]

It's anti-consumer. If you buy music online, say from iTunes, not only do you just download quality half that of a CD, but you can only use it in either iTunes or on your iPod. Want to use it in Windows Media Player or your iRiver? Download it again from Napster. Wanna use it on linux? Buy the CD and rip it.

It's retarded and I don't understand why consumers actually allow companies to do this.

[mendhak]

DRM is yet another technology which means well, but has all the potential for abuse (What technology has not been abused?).

The general gist of the fear is the amount of control that companies have over the products that they give you and how little the consumer has.

Yet for some reason, iPods are selling like crazy... which I think is just as retarded.