Privately, Hollywood admits DRM isn't about piracy

Given my increased level of irritation with DRM at the moment you won't be surprised that I draw your attention to this.

"For almost ten years now I have argued that digital rights management has little to do with piracy, but that is instead a carefully plotted ruse to undercut fair use and then create new revenue streams where there were previously none...

In a nutshell: DRM's sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights so that they can sell them back to you...

There is simply no evidence whatsoever that DRM slows piracy. In fact, all of the evidence suggests the opposite, and arguments that DRM "keeps honest people honest" are frankly insulting. If they're already honest, they don't need DRM.

If we believe Ronald Grover's sources in his BusinessWeek article of last week, the problem is liberal DRM and not piracy, and this is a startling admission. According to him, an unnamed studio executive said that a major reason why studios weren't jumping on board with the iTunes Store and other similar services is that their DRM is too lax. "[Apple's] user rules just scare the heck out of us." It's not piracy that's the concern, it's their ability to control how you use the content you purchase.

As it turns out, five devices authorized for playback is too many, and the studios apparently believe that this is "just as bad" as piracy. Hollywood believes that iTunes Store customers will add their buddies' devices to their authorization list, and like evil communists, they'll share what they have purchased. This makes little sense, because the way iTunes works, you can only issue so many device authorizations at a time. You could share with a friend, but then your friend would have to be authorized to play all of your purchased content, taking up an authorization. Inconvenient, huh? But is it a big problem?

I can walk in to Best Buy right now, buy a DVD, and lend it to every person I know. Who hasn't lent a DVD to a friend or colleague? This is perfectly legal behavior, but you can see that Hollywood hopes to stop this kind of thing via DRM. Thanks to the DMCA, once copyrighted contents have been encrypted, your rights fly right out the window."