Excellent argument by Cory over at Boing Boing:

Boing Boing: Cory sets DRM strawmen ablaze
The final straw-man here is about whether DRM is “too restrictive” — whether it impinges on “reasonable expectations.” But that’s not what anyone in this fight actually is arguing about. It’s about the ability of the studios to change the rules of the game: whether the factors that influence your purchase today are subject to change later. Not whether the device is too restrictive today, but how restrictive it might someday become. What are the anti-features of the device, the technologies that can be used to remove features you enjoy today?

That is the question, not “how restrictive is the DRM today?” If you believe in markets, in making money, in providing shareholder value, in all the cant of capitalism, then this is the question you should want to see uppermost in the minds of “consumers” when they make a purchase decision, because that is the only way that the market can “correct” DRM that overreaches.

A good example of this sort of switcheroo that can occur with DRM, is the infamous iTunes update that resulted in all previous iTMS DRM’ed purchases losing their agreed to 10 burns to a certain playlist and having them rolled back to 7 burns a playlist. 3 burns, who cares? I do. Because in the original sale agreement with Apple, I paid $.99 for 10 burns and less than a year later Apple decided to steal 3 of those burns from me and every other loyal customer. According to the current iTMS documentation and agreement, there is nothing to stop them from doing this again. whenever they feel like it.

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