Today’s XKCD strip fairly clearly explains why DRM (“Digital Rights Management” – i.e. Copy Protected)-hobbled media is bad. It’s also the reason I still get all my music on physical CD. Not only do I support the artist, but I can rip the music to mp3 (or any format I choose) and put the music on my home server. I can also take the music with me when technology changes (all I have to do is re-rip the music into whatever new format). Also, (barring the not-much-used superaudio and such formats) CDs have the highest quality music. Think “Master” recording. Most other formats (mp3, etc.) are “lossy”, meaning they are of lower quality than the original.

Let me make myself clear here. The comic above advocates Piracy. I don’t. The artists don’t get any support that way. I advocate buying CD’s or non-DRM digital files. But the comic is still funny. :)

Apple is aware of consumers’ distaste for DRM, which is why they make some of the music on iTunes available in “iTunes Plus” format – which is of higher quality and has no DRM. I think they charge $0.30 more per track for this. From what I can tell, all music on iTunes from EMI is available in the “Plus” format. Apple would gladly put all iTunes tracks in Plus format as well -but the only record company to give permission is EMI.

The evil Wal-Mart announced a month or so ago that it was taking down it’s DRM server. This meant that anyone foolish enough to have bought digital music from them would no longer be able to play that music if the computer they used ever crashed or was upgraded/replaced. This created such a backlash from the community that they recently changed their minds. But such a scenario will certainly replay itself in the future. So: Don’t buy digital music that has DRM.

Note that Wal-Mart’s solution initially offered to it’s users: Burn your music to CD and re-import it. Whoa. That would drastically reduce the quality. So why not get physical CD’s to begin with?