DRM Good for Music? Hell No!

Techdirt has a good rebuttal to an article from PC Magazine editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff. In the latter, Ulanoff claims--according to his interpretation of free market economies--that taking DRM out of music will kill the music industry (DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is the nastiness that iTunes uses to make sure the music you pay for can only be played on a limited number of computers. DRM can also restrict what type of device you can use to play, I reiterate, the music you have paid for). Well, nearly as soon as the article was published, flags went up around the blogosphere. It seems, perhaps, Ulanoff may rely too heavily on Wikipedia for his information. When Ulanoff asks if the world has gone mad for wanting free music, Techdirt gently pats him on the head and explains,

No, Lance, the world hasn't gone mad. The world (or, at least, much of it) has simply started to understand that basic economics still applies to infinite goods -- and if the marginal cost is zero, then a competitive marketplace will drive the cost to zero. It's not irrational. It's very, very rational. It's exactly as the core principles of economics predict. What's not rational is trying to set up artificial scarcity in a manner designed to shrink the pool of resources out there and to shrink the market itself.

Read the rest of Techdirt's facejob

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