The Hobgoblin of Inconsistency

Nobody uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) software more than Microsoft, whose Vista operating system is jammed with DRM applications, as is Zune and other spin-offs.  So, a few bloggers’ eyebrows were raised in skepticism when Bill Gates recently gave a speech in Seattle that seemed to endorse the very strategies that DRM was intended to prohibit. A more likely critic was National Public Radio, who ran an interview “Goodbye, VHS. Farewell, Fair Use” More significant than any of these rants is the big dollars Sony had to pony up after a recent court ruling in required the fine after finding that Sony had illegally embedded DRM software on many of their releases.