Category: Humor

Catch-22 of the Digital Age

I like to listen to audiobooks on my iPod. I have a subscription to Audible.com and buy one or two books a month. In the beginning things were fine, but about two years ago iTunes stopped remembering my Audible password. I get around this by double-clicking on any Audible file and put in my password when it asks. This fixes the problem long enough to sync. But if I quit iTunes, I start over. If I forget, iTunes automatically deletes the files from my iPod. Needless to say this is a major pain in the butt!

This got me thinking about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how wrong it is. The cartoonist xkcd sums this up nicely. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! I stopped buying DRM’d music from the iTunes Store in favor of DRM-free tunes from Amazon.com. As far as I know I don’t have that option for books. Why not?! [The irony here is Audible is now owned by Amazon.]

Thanks to xkcd.com!

June 2009 Update: The iTunes Store has gone DRM-free for music! How about it Audible?