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Message: <blockquote data-quote="inklesspen" data-source="post: 4746134" data-attributes="member: 67488">As an example, just off the top of my head, I bought a DRMed PDF copy of Spock's World, a Star Trek novel by Diane Duane. It used some particular form of DRM that was, at the time, integrated into Adobe Acrobat. It wouldn't work with non-Adobe readers (I use a Mac, and the Mac OS "Preview" app is a far better PDF reader than Adobe Reader) and, one day, Adobe decided to change how the DRM was implemented. Now I had to download and install a separate application which would periodically phone home to Adobe. I couldn't even read my book within Adobe Reader; I had to use this other Adobe app which had an even poorer interface.So, that's just one example. For another, suppose you have a small child, and he or she likes to watch DVDs. Bob the Builder, Dora, Spongebob, whatever. DVDs, of course, are easily damaged by small children. Wouldn't it be useful if you could make a copy of the DVD, keep the original locked up, and let your child watch the copy? If he breaks it, you just have to make another copy. Of course, DVDs are encrypted -- the encryption is trivially breakable, but it's illegal under US law to share tools designed to break this encryption. This is supposedly intended to prevent piracy (the effectiveness of which you may judge by the availability of bootlegs on the streets of Shanghai), but has the side effect of restricting legitimate uses of the product you purchased.</blockquote>

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