A load of C.R.A.P.

Hi, I'm David Berlind, Executive Editor at ZDNet. Today, we're going to talk about a rather uncomfortable subject, CRAP. That's right, CRAP. Now, CRAP stands for Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection. It's my catchy buzz-phrase for a technology that's really called DRM. Now DRM technically stands for Digital Rights Management, and it's a rather cancerous technology that technology vendors are actually building into most of the products that we're buying today.

So for example, if you own an iPod, it's got CRAP in it. That's right, it's got this technology that will restrict what you can do with your content, allows the owners of the content to annul that content-in other words, take it away from you-or protect it from being copied out onto the internet.

Now that was the original incarnation of DRM, to keep you from copying content on the internet. Now the way it works is we've got let's say a company who makes products like Apple here. And they have a technology that's CRAP that's around their products. And we'll put CRAP here because everything that happens inside of here, like video or let's say audio, for example, music, is protected by this layer of CRAP, and the only thing that can take that layer off are the devices that this company, Apple, says can take it off, for example, the iPod.

Now by itself, this isn't much of a problem until you go out and you buy a device that's based on Microsoft's CRAP. So here's a device that's based on Microsoft's CRAP, and here's their layer of CRAP here. And inside this little window is some video or some audio, like MP3 or music files. And guess what, when you take this layer of CRAP off, it only can play on a device that Microsoft says it can play on. Okay? The same way that Apple says when you take a layer of CRAP off of this music, it can only play on a device that Apple says it can play on. And the same thing goes, for example, for Sony. Sony has their own kind of CRAP. You heard about it with Rootkits and it's on their CDs, and put their own form of CRAP.

And guess what? If you try to connect these three universes, they don't connect. Doesn't happen. Sorry. Nada. This music won't play here. This music won't play here. And this music won't play here. That to me is a problem. That's why I say that all these devices, for example, the iPods that you buy out in the stores today, are a load of CRAP. I'm not going to buy any of this CRAP. Stop buying this CRAP. Don't buy any technology that has CRAP in it, because all it's going to do is make it impossible for you to take the content that you're paying good money for and play it anywhere you want.