Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
@Figment: Yes. I completely understand that a retailer has the right to refuse business for any reason, and that indeed, returns can mean losses that, if unchecked, would not provide any incentive for the customer to moderate their spending. Clearly, the benchmark is quite high enough that many customers can return items just fine and not be affected. I'm fairly sure Amazon could have handled it better (for instance by putting a human, rather than a machine, in charge) and there are legitimate cases, particularly third-party sellers, where Amazon is clearly in the wrong, but nevertheless it's completely reasonable for a retailer to close an account for excess returns. The UK consumer-rights group Watchdog actually featured a documentary about this situation, although they didn't look at the effects on digital content so much, just on the fact that a surprising minority were hitting the returns limit. But my real problem is with the completely one-sided approach to d igital purchases. Paying for a revocable license with irrevocable cash is stupid, yet it is what these corporations are happy to trick people into doing. That's clearly ethically bankrupt. I'm happy to make it harder for them to get away with that. Hopefully now you can too.
As for DRM in the big picture, I personally believe we will eventually be rid of it. People will realise what a mistake it is to give control of this sort to content holders, for example publishers will suddenly find that they can no longer do deals with competing resellers, consumers will be locked in to platforms, etc. So yeah, DRM will die, eventually, but only once all the pain and suffering and mistakes of a generation of greed and stupidity has run its course. Piracy was never the reason, of course--not when there are so many other, better ways of obtaining pirated content, none of which involve breaking DRM, and all of which are better experiences for the "Customer" than the real deal. This is because the good of open formats for the customers significantly outweighs the bad, in the end, which is why DRM proponents don't want to lose control over any other kind of media besides music. Compare the CD to the DVD, to take one example. You can rip CDs. You can't rip DVDs--at least, not well, and not as well as any CD. So now we have the absurd situation that it is still preferable to buy a DVD so you can rip it poorly and avoid the DRM of the online download (typically of worse quality), whereas the CD--the format that wasn't protected by DRM--is now dead, and everyone is buying from online music stores just to avoid the inconvenience of physical media. It's crazy. Obviously, it's not piracy, but control. DRM makes it possible to control how and when you use your content, and to enforce in technology that which copyright law will not enforce for the rights holders. The reason it's so hard to shake it off is that nobody could reason ably disagree with protecting copyright. It's a perfect camouflage. I know I'm not a pirate--well, not much, anyway. Yet my only market response is to buy even more of this DRM-encumbered shit, not because I want it, but because the content distributors really are the only ones with a say in how its produced and distributed and this is the only choice in town. Ugh! Just avoid it as best you can, and break it when you learn how, I guess, until the laws catch up, and copyright gets fixed so it can't be abused in ways that are socially damaging. I daresay DRM and harbouring out-of-print material both qualify for that.
As for multiple accounts at Amazon: no, Amazon explicitly go out of their way to link up billing and address details, so you can't do that, alas. In fact, they openly prevent you from touching your account once it's frozen, for that very reason. Nice idea, though.
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