Post 11 - Week 5 blog assignment - Personal experience with DRM

While I don't have a lot of experience personally with DRM, I will say that it has made me think twice about buying CDs. Now that the Sony thing has happened and record companies are starting to restrict consumers rights on music, I'm much more interested in supporting local musicians on small labels who don't try to restrict where you can listen to your music. If I purchase a CD, I want the rights to do whatever I want for my personal use.

On the flip side, I love what it has done for the book industry with all of the different formats coming out. Books on mp3 is actually viable versus books on CD or tape. While that distribution model wasn't created by DRM, DRM has made such distribution much less risky for content producers. Now, I can borrow an ebook from the library and know it will disappear in a month if I don't renew it. That doesn't bother me since that's what I've done with hardcopy books from the library forever. But if I buy a book, I get to do with it as I please as long as it is for my personal use.

Amazon's model of letting you buy an online copy of the book provided you buy the hard copy of the book as well is brilliant. I've actually done this with another computer book already because it's a training book and with the online version, I can use the "Try this out" sections with the computer program open at the same time. And, the impatient part of me that's unwilling to pay extra for fast shipping was more than willing to pay for an electronic copy of the book.