Mediaholic

I have come across a CNET article about Intel's VIIV and could not ignore two very concise sentences by Don MacDonald, Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Digital Home Group. Here are two quotes from the article:

• it's wrong to assume that "all consumers are criminals".
  
  
• Ultimately, though, MacDonald is confident that piracy won't be a significant issue for Viiv, as Intel promises to "make content easier to buy than it is to pirate".

So the first quote clearly explains the inherent evil of DRM systems, while the second provides a real solution for piracy, one that is already proven in the market. Make it easier to buy than to pirate and people will buy - this is what the iTunes music store has proven! For those that claim that this is thanks to the fact the iTunes sells DRM prtected music, I say, all iTunes music is available on P2P networks so DRM is obviously irrelevant. It is indisputable by now that most people wish to pay for music and will pay as long as a reasonable solution is available to them.

MacDonald further says in that article that Intel's stance surrounding Digital Rights Management (DRM) is that consumers should be able to do whatever they like with legally purchased content. That means backing it up to external drives and streaming it to other devices such as handhelds and networked machines. The only thing I would add is that it will be a long time before people can do all that with DRM around (if ever) so it is time to say goodbye to this ineffective solution and focus in the things that can actually decrease piracy such as establishing easy to use innovative solutions for content consumption and educating our kids to avoid piracy.