> If you're walking into a situation with your eyes open, then go for it. I pay money to Spotify on a monthly basis because I view it the same way I view cable TV - I'm paying for access, I'm not purchasing something. But if you want to keep something long term, and have it work the way you want it to, then don't buy it unless it's DRM free.
This seems like reasonable advice but I'm not sure it really follows from the heading. DRM in Spotify is reasonable because if they shut down you lose nothing and can move easily to another service (rdio or whatever).
Paying for something that you have no control over is reasonable only if you don't care whether you get to keep it long term (I'd personally put books on Kindle in this category as I'm only ever going to read them once). If you care about access to something long term, then either subscribe to a service that provides it (i.e. you explicitly own nothing (like Netflix and Spotify)), or get it DRM free.
In a roundabout way such concepts also apply to things like Google Reader, which is fairly trivial to migrate to another service vs Email, which (unless you own the domain) isn't.
This seems like reasonable advice but I'm not sure it really follows from the heading. DRM in Spotify is reasonable because if they shut down you lose nothing and can move easily to another service (rdio or whatever).
Paying for something that you have no control over is reasonable only if you don't care whether you get to keep it long term (I'd personally put books on Kindle in this category as I'm only ever going to read them once). If you care about access to something long term, then either subscribe to a service that provides it (i.e. you explicitly own nothing (like Netflix and Spotify)), or get it DRM free.
In a roundabout way such concepts also apply to things like Google Reader, which is fairly trivial to migrate to another service vs Email, which (unless you own the domain) isn't.