Someone over at the Inquirer has had enough. He's been looking into the various attempts at copy protection and has come to the same conclusion many others have: these systems do absolutely nothing for end users, except offer them a more expensive product with fewer features. As the writer notes, that just doesn't fly. It's a shortsighted plan, aimed at holding on to an obsolete business model, rather than realizing that properly embracing a copy protection free world makes consumers happy, gives them the ability to sample, and makes them more likely to buy certain products, if offered properly. Something in that vision seems to scare the hell out of folks in a few different industries. The Inquirer piece suggests they're either clue-proof or incredibly greedy. What's stupid, though, is that in being incredibly greedy, they're actually shrinking their market, by wasting money on products people don't want, and not embracing systems that would expand their market by opening up new opportunities.