Following the previous post, and in the spirit of full disclosure, a few notes on my own experiences of software activation and DRM.
I’ve never yet had problems with product activation (but I’m grateful to Jeff Duntemann for his advice not to upgrade to the latest Acrobat version - I too remain happy with version 4.0).
I like iTunes, and sometimes buy music there. My next step, though, is always to burn to CD and rip back to a non-DRM format (Ogg Vorbis in my case). My iriver H140 audio player has no DRM support whatsoever, and I see this as a big plus. I want to be sure that I can never be locked out of anything I load onto it.
I buy CDs often. Just once I bought one that was “protected” so I couldn’t play it on the PC, or copy it to my iriver. Of course, I had to find a way around this (and I’ve sworn never to buy a BMG disc again).
Talking of good music, this is what’s currently seeing regular play on the aforementioned iriver:
- The Decemberists, Picaresque
- The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema
- Goldfrapp, Supernature
2 responses so far ↓
1 the case against .NET » Blog Archive » Sony smooths path for virus writers // Nov 11, 2005 at 00:00
[...] I mentioned in September that I’d already stopped buying BMG discs, because of the aggravation caused by an earlier copy protection scheme. I suspect rather more people are now adopting the same attitude to this company’s disgraceful disregard for its paying customers. [...]
2 Neron // Mar 19, 2006 at 03:14
I bought two ebooks at amazon. I live in Bolivia on a farm far from a City. I have a PC but no Internet. So I bought it through an Internet coffee and now I can’t use it on my PC because it needs an Internet connection to connect to the passport server for the DRM activation …
I never ever will buy such a Bulls… again !