DRM: it’s bad for mother nature too
A necessary evil of our digital content-distributing world is the much discussed Digital Rights Management that attempt to keep the content creators as happy as the content consumers. A tough balance to be sure, it’s often frustrating to both parties and while several content distributors continue to make embarrassing attempts at fair DRM, very few have gotten it right. With so many upsides and an equal number of negatives, it’s hard to be for or against DRM, the safe bet seems to evaluate it on a case by case basis. Here’s a downside though that surprised me but makes complete sense.
“Often forgotten are factors such as equalization, file size, file format, and yes, DRM all of which can decrease battery life. If a circuit is active, it’s using power. If the processing is more complex, as it would be in the case of DRM, the circuit uses more power. So how much power is lost to DRM? link
So along with many other horror stories DRM brings us, now we have millions of computers and portable music players using more power and in the end soaking up more natural resources, all to ensure they get their cut.
Next time someone accuses you of “acquiring” a few songs, tell ‘em you did it for rainforest.