RIAA Declares Death of Digital Rights Manufacturing, Causes Everyone’s Head To Explode

TorrentFreak reports that the chief spokesperson for the RIAA has gone on record saying that DRM is dead:

Jonathan Lamy, chief spokesperson for the RIAA declared DRM dead, when he was asked about the RIAA’s view on DRM for an upcoming SCMagazine article. “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Lamy said, referring to the DRM-less iTunes store and other online outfits that now offer music without restrictions.

DRM, which advocates claim is an acronym for “Digital Rights Management,” stands for Digital Rights Manufacturing, and refers to a number of technological methods by which media companies can manufacture legal rights for themselves out of thin air. These synthetic rights allow the gigantic corporation to prevent a legitimate buyer of a song, movie, video game, or other piece of media from doing anything particularly useful with it. It has been used by music distributors throughout the 00s as a sales reducer.

The RIAA, or Retrospectively Irrelevant Association of America, has long championed the use of DRM on music, asserting that la la la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la la la. The sudden change in attitude has so far caused 40 deaths and 900 injuries worldwide related to high-decibel emissions of “wait, what?”

Update: Actually, no, they didn’t. They just said it’s not on iTunes and stuff anymore, so that means something. Oh well.