Kirk Biglione

I’ve reached that age where each passing year seems to fly by at an ever increasing speed. By the time I’m 90, a year will seem like a day. However, this year is proving to be an exception to the trend. 2008 seems to be taking a lifetime.

It might have something to do with the demolition. We started a major renovation project last month, and our house has been gutted. As a result, we’ve been forced to move out. It’s sort of hard to maintain a home office when construction workers are knocking down walls.

My last move was 14 years ago, and let me tell you, it’s amazing how much junk can accumulate in that period of time. I feel fortunate that I joined the cult of GTD a few years back. During my purge it became obvious that most of what got purged was pre-GTD. If nothing else, this move has validated the effectiveness of GTD — even my quirky and somewhat limited personal implementation of GTD.

Meanwhile we’re living in an apartment while we wait for our contractor to rebuild our house. I haven’t lived in an apartment since I first moved to LA, and I have to say, this pseudo-upscale urban lifestyle is not for me. Outrageously high rent, bad plumbing, noisy neighbors, and the worst cable company in the world aren’t exactly my idea of a quality life.

If my back yard wasn’t full of lumber I might just go home and pitch a tent.

I knew that I’d written a lot about DRM over the past few years, but I had no clue just how much until I started sifting through the Medialoper archives in preparation for my TOC conference presentation next week.

In my defense, there’s been a lot to write about. The entertainment industry’s obsession with DRM has been both fascinating and baffling. At this point, almost no one believes that DRM actually prevents piracy. To make matters worse, it’s become clear that DRM is a barrier to the development of a viable marketplace for digital content. And yet, the vast majority of media companies still insist on using DRM. Even the record companies that have recently begun selling DRM-free music still won’t rule out a return to DRM.

This is insanity. And a strange form of ritual suicide by DRM.

There’s no point in going on about DRM when I’ve already written so much about the topic. Since I frequently get inquiries about DRM I thought it might be useful (to myself if no one else) to collect links to my various posts on the topic here.

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The future of all media distribution is digital. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And yet, most media companies remain unable (or unwilling) to deliver the products and services that connected consumers clearly want. All too many media companies insist on using consumer hostile technologies that ultimately drive otherwise honest customers to seek out black market content sources.

I’ve been writing about this issue over at Medialoper for some time now. I’ll be presenting a session titled DRM, Digital Content, and the Consumer Experience (lessons learned from the music industry) at the O’Reilly TOC conference next month.

TOC has emerged as the premier conference (possibly the only conference) designed to help book publishers come to terms with the range of technologies that are transforming their industry. Given recent release of the Amazon Kindle, I think this presentation couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

I’ve long advocated that EVERYONE should register their name as a dot com (provided the name is available, of course). I registered my domain name quite a while ago, but I’ve just been too busy to do anything with it.

Well, KirkBiglione.com is officially online. That means I’ve finally done one of the things that I’m always telling other people to do. Another new years resolution crossed off the list. At this rate, I may actually accomplish everything I set out to do this year.