I'll say it once: Control. They want a way to force more people to buy from them, by stopping people from sharing music. But thanks to the knowing few who warned us about it, it will hopefully stop.
Unfortunately, that's not the last time we'll hear about DRM. Its main challenge is to provide both conveniency AND CONTROL to consumers. Its about an unbalanced fight between the media industry and the consumers, lost for the latter since the DMCA was drafted.
Once upon a time, people casually relinquished the right to copy (ie books, vinyl discs...) to the industry because it required a tiresome effort only the industry at that time could produce. Copyright used to limit copying to the companies authorized. Recently it has been used as a way to restrict everything.
Remember, copyright is an industry regulation. It should not apply to 'consumers'.
But in the current age we live in, since it became easier and easier to copy content (either books or music i.e), people are no longer willing to give up the right to copy for private/personnal uses.
For everyone's notice, I say that copyright is supposed to ensure both the sharing of knowledge and the rewarding of innovation. There is no room for excessive greed there.
READ THIS FOR MORE:
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http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4348970.stm COPYRIGHT FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
DRM has essentially these uses for companies:
- Competing products are driven off the market because of incompatible DRM. The most popular wins.
- Competition is prevented
- Abuse of "copyright protection" rewards monopolies. Remember Microsoft's. They're at it too, not only Sony is.
- Copyright's balance of benefits is definitely lost.
- Beneficiaries are a tiny fraction of society
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