My latest opinion piece has been published today at The Punch, “Australia’s Best Conversation”. The title was the work of the editor, and is deliberately sensationalist, but the piece should clarify my position. It begins thusly:
Digital Rights Management doesn’t work. DRM is a method of locking digital media so it can’t be shared. Except it fails. For every form of DRM employed, pirates instantly break it.
DRM only inconveniences honest, paying customers. For example, in the case of eBooks, a person might justifiably want to have their book on their PC and their tablet, but DRM can prevent that.
I regularly get Google Alerts about my books being mentioned online and many times it’s when they appear illegally on filesharing sites. For every download like that, it’s a drop of cash not going to keeping food on my table, right? Actually, probably not.
This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.