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How DRM Won
Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2009, when Apple dropped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions from songs sold through the iTunes Store, it seemed like a huge victory for consumers, one that would usher in a more customer-friendly economy for digital media. But four years later, DRM is still alive and well — it just lives in the cloud now. Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service; you're also subject to arbitrary changes in subscription prices. This should be a nightmare scenario to lovers of music, film, and television, but it's somehow being hailed by many as a technical revolution. Unfortunately, what's often being lost in the hype over the admittedly remarkable convenience of streaming media services is the simple fact that meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. In other words, where your media collection is stored (and can be remotely disabled at a whim) is not something to be taken lightly. In this essay, developer Vijith Assar talks about how the popularity of streaming content could result in a future that isn't all that great. 'Ultimately, regardless of the delivery mechanism, the question is not one of streaming versus downloads,' he writes. 'It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's. Be careful.'"
There's hundreds of plug-ins, extensions, and rip programs to grab the content. It has to be de-coded to be played, moving to streams only turns the tide slightly.
It seems we're coming to a middle ground though, as most streaming DRM does not significantly get in the way of most (read:Windows) users.
All DRM is bad. DRM is not and never was about protecting content, it is about control. Protecting content from pirates is impossible. Controlling apathetic legal users is feasible and profitable, on the other hand.
XBMC gives you all of the shiny shiny of something like iTunes but with the possibility that you can own and control your own content. You only have to pay for something once and it's yours forever and you never have to worry about some disguised cable TV company going out of business.
Of course it has to work against the framework that large corporations have lobbied for. Although that's not necessarily a show stopper.
Odd; I use iTunes to control my own content. It's on my computer, and is not controlled by Apple (not even in their preferred "Library". The stuff in iTunes is also mirrored in the cloud.
"The Cloud" is a means of distribution; it's equivalent to making backup copies of your DVDs that you use all the time, keeping the originals stored away. Cloud services allow you to access select content from anywhere; I'd stay away from ANY cloud service that didn't allow you to have a local copy of your cloud contents as well (I'm looking at you, Facebook).
As such, this entire article is based on a false premise. While Cloud services could be moving in that direction, right now they are used (and advertised) as an alternate distribution system for content you own. Deleting all copies except what's in the cloud is silly, as you never know when cloud access will vanish.
The big issue with Cloud data is that you lose primary control of the data -- that's fine for disposable/consumable data (music, movies, etc) but for anything you don't want to also belong to other people, don't put it in the cloud.
All that said, DRM still won: it lost in the audio realm, but won in general computing, mobile computing and video. Steam is really a much better example of this than iCloud.