Such is the mention of DRM to Cory Doctorow . . . š
DRM shortens iPod battery life:
Cory Doctorow: Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device’s battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licenses.
This is not a real comparison, and if you read the whole article, it isn’t clear that anyone has compared AAC files head to head, DRM vs non-DRM, to see if the discrepancy is due to the license data or just a more complex algorithm.
He may be right, but he sure does jump out on these things pretty quickly. DRM is bad enough on it’s own “merits” w/o throwing out potentially misleading claims.