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'smy catchy buzz-phrase for a technology that's really called DRM. Now DRM technicallystands for Digital Rights Management, and it's a rather cancerous technologythat technology vendors are actually building into most of the products thatwe'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 withyour content, allows the owners of the content to annul that content-in otherwords, take it away from you-or protect it from being copied out onto theinternet.
Now that was the original incarnation of DRM, to keep youfrom copying content on the internet. Now the way it works is we've got let'ssay a company who makes products like Apple here. And they have a technologythat's CRAP that's around their products. And we'll put CRAP here becauseeverything that happens inside of here, like video or let's say audio, forexample, music, is protected by this layer of CRAP, and the only thing that cantake that layer off are the devices that this company, Apple, says can take itoff, for example, the iPod.
Now by itself, this isn't much of a problem until you go outand you buy a device that's based on Microsoft's CRAP. So here's a devicethat's based on Microsoft's CRAP, and here's their layer of CRAP here. Andinside 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 adevice that Microsoft says it can play on. Okay? The same way that Apple sayswhen you take a layer of CRAP off of this music, it can only play on a devicethat 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 ontheir 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 aproblem. That's why I say that all these devices, for example, the iPods thatyou buy out in the stores today, are a load of CRAP. I'm not going to buy anyof this CRAP. Stop buying this CRAP. Don't buy any technology that has CRAP init, because all it's going to do is make it impossible for you to take thecontent that you're paying good money for and play it anywhere you want.
