Declaration of InDRMpendence

David Berland at ZDNet has issued his own declaration of inDRMpendence.

"Earlier today, after describing to a close friend the rock and the hard place that I'm between since I can't easily play the 99 cent songs I buy through Apple's iTunes music store on my $20,000 whole home entertainment setup, he said "Dave… check out Sonos' solution. It'll solve your problem for about $500 per room."

Not that I have another $500 per room to spend, but I checked into it and the solution is indeed very cool. The units that you put into each room wirelessly form a self-organized mesh and just one of them needs access to your music library on a computer or network attached storage (NAS) device. Unfortunately, if I buy Sonos' gear, it appears as though I'll run in the same problem that I'm already having. According to a technical specifications page on Sonos Web site, "DRM-encrypted and Apple or WMA Lossless formats not currently supported." In other words, songs purchased through iTunes that are wrapped in Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) envelope won't work. Neither will songs you buy from stores based on Microsoft's DRM technology found in content purchased through PlaysForSure-logoed merchants (eg: Napster-to-Go). While I hate to be the breaker of bad news, I sent him an e-mail explaining the situation.

But now that DRM is coming up on my radar every day, and the more I read about it (on the Web, in our TalkBacks, and in my e-mail), the angrier I get. To vent, I've decided to start regularly ranting about DRM. "

It's a very readable rant if you're concerned about drm.