Digital Home Thoughts: Walt Mossberg Weighs in on DRM

"In some quarters of the Internet, the three most hated letters of the alphabet are DRM. They stand for Digital Rights Management, a set of technologies for limiting how people can use the music and video files they've purchased from legal downloading services. DRM is even being used to limit what you can do with the music you buy on physical CDs, or the TV shows you record with a TiVo or other digital video recorder. Once mainly known inside the media industries and among activists who follow copyright issues, DRM is gradually becoming familiar to average consumers, who are increasingly bumping up against its limitations."

For once I can't find fault in a Walt Mossberg article. I should write this date down. At any rate, Walt waxes about DRM the balance between protecting industry interests (there are some legitimate ones) and consumers having the ability to use the things they buy the way they want. I have a DRM story that ended up being a bit long, so it's now part of an upcoming column. Watch for it, and weigh in.