I used to enjoy getting Slate’s daily round-up of the newspapers stuffed into my inbox every day. But I somehow fell off the list, so I went to re-subscribe. It’s free, but…

…to sign up, Microsoft, the owner of Slate, requires you to set up a Microsoft Passport account. There’s no reason why we actually need a Passport account in order to have the stinking newsletter sent to us. It’s just Microsoft’s velvet-gloved strong-arm tactics.

This is how options become requirements. The “free” market tells us that we are free not to sign up for a digital ID scheme or a Digital Restrictions Management scheme, so long as we’re willing to cut ourselves off further and further from the cultural mainstream. Sure, DRM is voluntary…unless you want to listen to a hit song or see a hit movie on your computer.

What is optional in theory, in the reality of a market dominated by huge economic forces becomes a cultural necessity.

Categories: Uncategorized dw