Catch-22 of the Digital Age

Richard Rathe, February 2009 (Technology)

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-headed 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 files 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.]