DRM

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Pirate Culture

February 12, 2011 in Books, DRM, Nuts, Rants by CiaranG | 5 comments

TL;DR – Take your DRM and sling your hook

It all started when I finished reading one book and got a few pages into another I didn’t really want to read. It occurred to me that it must be about time for another Ian M. Banks book to be out (it’s been this long since I read the last), and perhaps even one of his Culture novels. Sure enough, it turned out that that Surface Detail came out last year.

One snag – after years of stubborn nay-saying, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that ebooks are good thing, for various reasons which I’ll save for another day. This shouldn’t have been a snag, of course, it should have made it easy – instead of an hour’s round trip to the bookshop, complete with the costs of petrol and parking and the need to mingle with shoppers, I could have had it there and then. Or, relatively painlessly if I was prepared to wait for the postman.

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Radiohead – almost right

October 18, 2007 in DRM, Music by CiaranG | 6 comments

I’m over the moon many different ways about the new Radiohead album. You’d have to have been living on the moon to miss the story, but just in case you have, it can be summarised like this: You buy and download the album direct from Radiohead’s web site, and name your own price. That can even be £0 if you like.

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Amazon – Just sell me the music

September 25, 2007 in DRM, Music by CiaranG | 4 comments

Another “DRM-free” music seller arrives, and another disappointment – this time around it’s Amazon, who today launched the beta of their Amazon MP3 music store.

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Eating my own dog food

July 16, 2007 in DRM, Games, Software by CiaranG | 4 comments

Fortunately I haven’t really been eating dog food, I’m talking metaphorically. It started when I ‘accidentally’ purchased an Amiga 500 on Ebay for a fiver, and found that the only Amiga software I had in the house was a still-shrinkwrapped copy of one of my own games, a flight sim called Dogfight – 80 Years of Aerial Warfare. (In the US it was called Air Duel I think)

The first thing I was hit with was the ‘DRM‘, in the form of a “please enter 12 from page 47, paragraph 3 of the manual” question. A classic way to irritate your paying customers repeatedly, while the so-called pirates (arrrrr!) get off scot free. Of course, these days far more devious and dastardly schemes sail the high seas, but it did remind me of various other similar copy-protection fiascos I should be ashamed to have been involved in, so I’ll probably write more about them another day.

The next realisation was that it was really a PC game, shoehorned onto the Amiga, and really needing at least an A1200 rather than the comparitively sluggish A500. It did keep me amused for an hour or so, but all in all it wasn’t a very rewarding experience. Like most (but not all) old games, the memory is better than the reality, and probably best left that way. Suffice to say the game, and manual, have gone back in the box and will probably stay there for a long time.

In fact, until I get hold of some software, the Amiga is going back in the box as well, to sit in the loft with the countless other old computers.

Bad Vista

July 1, 2007 in DRM by CiaranG | 1 comment

People keep asking me what’s wrong with it. The answer is usually “how long have you got?” It’s not just that it’s pointless, slow, wasteful and just plain rubbish. It’s much worse.

Here is a more complete answer, if you’re interested. If I’ve directed you to this particular blog entry (and let’s face it, why else would you be here?), it means I don’t want you to ask me about it again until you’ve followed that link and read it. ;)