After writing about bronies for Ron Paul, I realized I’d gone too long without watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and decided to start on Season 2. I learned during my article research that MLP:FiM is now available on iTunes. Since I’d watched all of Season 1 on YouTube (I don’t get The Hub channel), I wanted to support Hasbro this time by purchasing the episodes. 

Just like the the pirated versions on YouTube, the iTunes episodes are in HD quality. The difference, however, is that they take forever to download— about 30 minutes per episode in my case. So instead of waiting for my legal copy to download, I just went to YouTube to watch the episode concurrently.

I watched two before my legal copy finished downloading. I’m guessing it’s the DRM—particularly the code that keeps me from sharing the episode on more than an allotted number of devices—that made it so much slower than a pirated copy. As John Walker wrote about games, DRM is something that only punishes the legal user:

DRM doesn’t work. There’s no argument about that at all. It is code that prevents a game from working properly, but only for those who bought a legitimate copy.

I wish there were some way I could pay to stream episodes over an allotted period of time, or donate to Hasbro. I’m legally downloading each episode I want to watch because it’s the right thing to do. But there’s something wrong with the system when pirating is more convenient than purchasing.