Amazon clarifies its App Store DRM -- it's not nearly as scary as you thought

Remember that blog post from Amazon a couple days back detailing how DRM (digital rights management) would work? Basically, it said if you download an app from the upcoming Amazon App Store, it'd need to check in with the Amazon App Store app on your phone before declaring itself legally downloaded and allowing you to use it. But once it's done that, it's status quo, all systems go, business as usual.

It caused a bit of a ruckus, to be sure. 

Only, Amazon apparently left out a couple things. And Thing 1 is a pretty important one: The Amazon DRM only applies to applications that opted to use Amazon's DRM in the first place.

Oh. Indeed, that makes a difference.So if a developer chooses not to "Apply Amazon DRM to this binary" (that's the actual upload screen above), it's just like downloading an application from anywhere else, and it'll work just fine.

Thing 2 is this: Amazon DRM downloads a token that gives your phone access to use the downloaded application. It's an offline token, meaning you don't have some constant connection checking in with the Amazon mothership, draining your battery and worrying your precious sense of personal privacy. In other words, it's not nearly as scary as you probably first thought. [Amazon]