DRM is “Digital Rights Management,” the technology that exuberantly (but rarely completely, and never conveniently) restricts folks from doing stuff with media material that they, y’know, own, and pursuit of which is the Holy Grail of Big Media with the idea that if everything is locked down with DRM then we can be made to pay each and every time we want to watch something. Basically, it what keeps you from (when it works as intended) ripping your DVD down to your PC to watch at your convenience, or copying a music track you downloaded to your PC onto your MP3 player. It’s also what (when it doesn’t work well) ends up infecting your PC with a rootkit viruses, keeps your DVD player from playing a DVD you just bought, and leads to companies claiming that they “own” random numbers that they use for decryption.
The tech chief of HBO, Bob Zitter, has decided that “DRM” is not euphemistic enough. He wants to call it DCE, “Digital Consumer Enablement”:
Speaking at a panel session at the NCTA show in Consumerist)
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