Brands are obsessed with appearing cool; therefore, they capture and mine youth

Digital locks are not the way to protect your 
content.
So, the internet has opened up access to 
content. Naturally this raises copyright concerns 
for creators and consumers alike. But how can a 
content creator make a profit and prevent the 
pirating and free distribution of their work?
Well, digital locks are one possibility.
A digital lock is basically an algorithmic way to 
scramble your content, protecting it until the 
proper key is entered, at which point the content 
returns to a readable form. These types of keys 
are used just about everywhere, from your 
Kindle to your DVD player.
The trouble is that digital locks don’t really work: 
any programmer with a few days on their hands 
could easily crack a key. So, while such locks 
are widely used by the likes of Amazon and 
Sony, they’re far from secure.
Just take the hacker Muslix64, who cracked the 
key to a HD-DVD player in a snap. After that, the 
information on how to play such DVDs on any 
player spread all over the internet.
What’s worse, the middlemen who create the 
digital locks can hold your content captive. Once 
you let a middleman – a distributor, say – lock 
your content, they control who has access to it.
For instance, Hachette, one of the world’s 
largest book publishers, learned about the power 
of the middleman the hard way. They allowed a 
digital lock to be put on all the books they sold 
on Amazon, but when they turned down an 
unfair contract renegotiation from Amazon, the 
reaction was immediate. Mere hours later, none 
of the publisher’s books were available on 
Kindle. Not even ones from famous authors like 
J.K. Rowling. What’s worse, Hachette basically 
couldn’t do anything but complain.
Clearly, digitally locking your content isn’t very 
helpful. Furthermore, it can actually be 
dangerous, too.