JasonGalterio posted at 5:23PM Mon, 02 November 2015 - #4236546

DAZ is obviously investing money into the DRM transition, but while leaving the same items non-DRMed. So then what is being gained for DAZ?

Items are only remaining unencrypted for the immediate future, and anything downloaded via DIM and ZIPs are unencrypted. DAZ promises (for whatever THAT'S worth) that these methods will be available for at least a few years yet, but at some point, new content will become DAZ Connect-downloadable only (my guess is that Michael 7 kicks it all off). I would look for DAZ to kill the ZIPs and DIM entirely as soon as possible after that, leaving only DAZ Connect (with its content-encrypting ways) as the only means to download content from the DAZ store. It's already been stated openly in the DAZ forums that DAZ Connect encrypts key files of everything that passes through it, so even older pre-DRM content (V4 and M4, for example) will be encrypted if downloaded through it. To encrypt some items but not others would be for DAZ to tell one content creator that their work is worthy of whatever protection their DRM can provide, but that another content creator's work is not, and I can see a revolt happening if they were to do that.