I don't entirely agree. Current implementations of DRM (by which I mean both the standards and the software which works with them) are terrible technically, ethically and probably legally. The biggest single problem is that DRM typically prevents (or rather, tries to prevent) many kinds of fair use. The second biggest problem is that if you have a bit of cunning and a screwdriver, no DRM technology on earth can prevent you from copying content illegally. So current DRM technology inconveniences the average user quite heavily, and the committed pirate not at all.
The fact that specific DRM technologies are being used by cynical corporations to lock customers (and their disposable income) into one provider is a property of IT in general rather than DRM in particular, and the usual issues all apply.
Where DRM stands out compared with other IT is that the rights holders want to make it as physically difficult as possible to specifically act to breach their licenses, and current DRM standards are driven solely by rights holders. The upshot of this is that they want to own the physical data channel all the way from microphone to eardrum, which is rather akin to a diamond merchant asserting that in order to prevent jewel heists, he demands the right to keep the entire population in handcuffs at all times. And that they have to pay for their own handcuffs, which furthermore must be of a design on which he holds several key patents. Criminals, of course, own their own boltcutters.
On the plus side, many users are quite willing to moderate their illegal activities, and are also quite willing to hand over a certain amount of money to artists, provided that the user considers the amount to be reasonable for what they get. As such, a lot of the principles of DRM are quite useful. For example: informing the user of the license under which they are acquiring content; enforcing that license in the absence of specific action by the user to breach it; associating with the content itself a means of paying for a license for that content; and standards which recognise common types of fair use and permit it in the absence of specific action by the rights holder to prevent it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-02-22 11:25 am (UTC)I don't entirely agree. Current implementations of DRM (by which I mean both the standards and the software which works with them) are terrible technically, ethically and probably legally. The biggest single problem is that DRM typically prevents (or rather, tries to prevent) many kinds of fair use. The second biggest problem is that if you have a bit of cunning and a screwdriver, no DRM technology on earth can prevent you from copying content illegally. So current DRM technology inconveniences the average user quite heavily, and the committed pirate not at all.
The fact that specific DRM technologies are being used by cynical corporations to lock customers (and their disposable income) into one provider is a property of IT in general rather than DRM in particular, and the usual issues all apply.
Where DRM stands out compared with other IT is that the rights holders want to make it as physically difficult as possible to specifically act to breach their licenses, and current DRM standards are driven solely by rights holders. The upshot of this is that they want to own the physical data channel all the way from microphone to eardrum, which is rather akin to a diamond merchant asserting that in order to prevent jewel heists, he demands the right to keep the entire population in handcuffs at all times. And that they have to pay for their own handcuffs, which furthermore must be of a design on which he holds several key patents. Criminals, of course, own their own boltcutters.
On the plus side, many users are quite willing to moderate their illegal activities, and are also quite willing to hand over a certain amount of money to artists, provided that the user considers the amount to be reasonable for what they get. As such, a lot of the principles of DRM are quite useful. For example: informing the user of the license under which they are acquiring content; enforcing that license in the absence of specific action by the user to breach it; associating with the content itself a means of paying for a license for that content; and standards which recognise common types of fair use and permit it in the absence of specific action by the rights holder to prevent it.