Heard a story on NPR yesterday about DRM and rights management in general. It seemed to point towards -- even referred to it by name once -- and Orwellian future. I've got to disagree. The biggest difference is that we've got choices, dang it, and everyone who can type "angelfire.com" can have a free printing press. Eventually you're going to reach that tipping point where people are going to be so put off by the newly introduced barriers to entry that open source and public domain are going to take off in places the commercial content "providers" never expected. Instead of cutting in half the number of people that *aren't* using their product (as discussed in the story linked above), these guys are just doubling the number of people that won't use their commercially distributed products.

I like iTunes and I've purchased three or four (maybe five?) albums, but I've still got 20 gigs of Furthurnet tunes. It wouldn't be that difficult to give up online music purchases (heck, even store bought, which I'd pretty much already done other than a few used purchases) if things get any worse. And have you ever seen how many books there are over 75 years old? We're going to be just fine.

So keep DRM coming. As long as Linux runs on some of the hardware that's released without all of the trusted computer overhead (or, preferrably, Apple stays out of the fray), eventually we'll be even better off than we are today.