Quote Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip View Post
...allowing you to track exactly who downloaded it if it shows up somewhere. I would think that just sharing the idea that the file might be tracked back to the person who shared it would be at least somewhat of a deterrent toward piracy...
DRM has developed a bad rap really because customers hate the DRM process, not the protection itself. It is generally clunky and a pain to use – and we won’t even get into XP vs OSX platform issues.

We have offered Windows Media DRM for sometime at CCBill, and have watched the market changes closely - as well as the anti-DRM movement.
But sorry, I have to disagree that DRM is dead.

Personally, I do believe that support for DRM as a protection mechanism is fading, but to Chip's point, our customers are starting to use DRM as a tracking tool. It has the ability to track where and when, and how many times a piece of content is played, where it is sent, limit the geographic regions and if you set-it up right – the DRM process can be INVISIBLE to the end-user.

I have to think that Apple/EMI are somehow tracking the DRM-free content...

In our minds, DRM was never intended to be anything other than a speed-bump to piracy (the pros will always crack the code and steal it somehow), but I think that bad DRM systems really are what made it the scourge of the consumer.

It would seem to me that this kind of tracking could add to a good marketing and affiliate strategy.