DRM-Free

What is DRM-Free?

DRM-Free refers to digital products sold that can be copied and pasted without trouble, because they're sold without a DRM technology attached on it, such as images (e.g. comics), music (songs), video (movies), video-games, and other software. For example, a game with DRM may require Internet connection and an online account to verify ownership, even if the game itself has no online features, such as multiplayer matches. Companies that sell multiple games with DRM may have their own launchers to launch their DRM games, which means you can't just copy and paste the .exe. In the case of music, normally, in the DRM-free case, you would have a .mp3 file that you can just copy and paste and open it in any music playing application. With DRM music, typically you can only play the song in a proprietary application that requires Internet connection to verify ownership. The same is true for video, except DRM-free files would other file extensions (e.g. .avi).

Selling DRM-free products makes it difficult to prevent privacy, which is why companies that have the resources to implement DRM often implement it. On the other hand, DRM makes it very difficult to actually have ownership over what you bought, which is why customers prefer DRM-free products. For example, if you bought a game that requires Internet connection, and the servers go offline, you can't play the game you bought. If the proprietary music or video player that plays the songs or videos you bought lacks a feature, you have no option to use an alternative player. You can't use VLC or MPC, for example, because if you could just open the video in other applications, you would be able to copy it and distribute it to other people.