DRM Hell

Ed Foster points to where DRM is taking us - and I don't think that this road was ever paved with good intentions:

My new microwave won't work because it objects to the brand of refrigerator I have in the kitchen. And the aspirin bottle has detected a rival brand in the medicine chest and therefore can't be opened. And my mattresses tag-removal alarm system is ...

Well, OK, maybe things haven't gotten quite that bad yet, but it's certainly the direction that software Digital Rights Management schemes are taking us. Most distressing is the trend by game software publishers to use DRM that refuses to let the game play if software it doesn't like is detected on the user's system.

"They really have gone too far this time," one reader recently wrote. "Check out the links in this Slashdot discussion. Sims 2 checks your computer and will not run 'when active CD Emulation software is detected by the copy protection on the game CD.' That means Electronic Arts wants us to remove perfectly legal programs like Nero and Clone CD that are often pre-installed by the PC manufacturer! This can't be legal."

That's what I call user hostile behavior - it's worse than the bad old days of copy protection schemes.