10 reasons to hate DRM
It was a lukewarm Japanese summer, many many years ago (actually, 5) A noobie CoZe, having just recently starting up his Japan-venture decides to shoot two birds with a single stöne, get a mp3 playing Japanese cell phone, so that he can listen to music while commuting on the train, and stay connected with people around him.
Never being much too interested in the cell phone mania, he ponders cluelessly around docomo and au shops, ultimately settling down with a Sony S700 series (cant make out the exact model now, but it was something along the lines of this) http://www.esato.com/phones/Sony+Ericsson-S710a-146 The maximum capacity memory card it can hold is just 128 mbs, but then mp3s were not so high quality coded and you could actually fit a couple of albums in there, which was adequate for my needs.
I didn’t really want to hassle with an i-pod just yet, besides everybody had and i-pod so it was not fun :) (I was anti apple even back then lol) Anyway, I got my phone, get acquainted, learned the tricks, bells and whistles, and time came to move on to my ultimate goal, listening to music on it.
The first let down was having to get a memorystick instead of a sdcard, which offer more capacity for a cheaper price. But hey it’s a Sony, so I thought I should put up with it. Along with it I got a cheapo memorystick reader to swoosh my mp3’s with one fell swoop. So that’s what I exactly did, but when I plugged the card to the phone, I couldn’t find any music files on it (>_<)>.
After some research, I find out that I need to copy the files via Sony provided software called SonicStage for them to work on the phone. So, well, a simple hurdle I think, how hard can it be ? It will probably just copy the files over and I’ll be done. So I download and install this wretched excuse of a software knowing little about the fell destiny awaiting me … If you have any doubts about how bad actually this piece of sh”t is, just check this page.
Anyway, fumbling about, I find out that sonicPhage doesnt recognize my memorystick reader. Wondering what’s going on, I check a little bit and I find out I have to purchase a sony provided memorystick reader to copy protected media. Cheapo readers wont work (what good they are then in the first place?) Sony MSAC-US2
Gritting my teeth, I purchase the sony reader for about 5 times the price of the cheapo one. Ok, this will be it, I’ll copy over my songs and I’ll be able to listen to my stuff on the train ! Only then I realise I can’t actually copy over mp3’s to my card. They have to be converted to this Sony propriety format called Atrac.
One more lesser hurdle, ok, I’ll just create a basic playlist, and leave the computer to convert and copy the files over to the memorystick, while I go eat something. When I come back I find my computer frozen, processor being kept constantly loaded by the magnificent piece of software Sony has decided to boon to humanity.
Restarting my system, I try to convert a smaller list, it freezes again. Restarting my system a couple of times, trying some settings, I find out the sonycSit-age will crash and burn and go down in flames when it is asked to convert files to specific bit rates. Figuring out the ‘magic numbers’ I succeed in converting and copying some tracks, having to forfeit some quality in the process.
All in the same while wondering how on earth such a ridiculously poorly written piece of software could ever be released to the end user from a major company such as Sony (and sonickStage was around then for about two years now !). I mean any 3rd grade from a computer science related school should be able to come about with a more robust program.
Anyway, if you think I finally managed to listen to my stuff after all this mess, you’re wrong, cause there was one more hurdle I should cover before I could actually listen to music on my phone. Buy a propriety earplug adapter so that I can plug my earphones to my phone (which is, as you might have guessed, 5 times more expensive than other similar adapters …)
All in all, this experience thought a very valuable lesson to me. STAY WELL CLEAR OF COMPANIES WHICH TRY TO GORGE THEIR CUSTOMERS BY SELLING THEM OVERPRICED ACCESORIES. Stick to the ones who work with standart equipment. Never buy anything which utilises any kind of DRM. And most important of all, never EVER buy anything with the combinations of letters S, O, N, Y on it !
In the end, paid more than I would have to the i-pod, but at least I got this lesson. That’s it, I’m hoping to retell you about my story of playing music on my android phone, which will end in only a couple of sentences (which is the way it should have been)
Btw, I’ll end this post with pointing out that Sony is a company which have installed rootkit on their users devices … How low can you go son ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal