Here's another interesting iron in the DRM fire. Erick Schonfeld has an article in Business 2.0, talking about a new startup, Navio, that hopes to put the control of digital media back in the hands of the media companies.
Navio's plan is to sell you the right to use content perpetually depending on what rights you are willing to pay for.
Imagine if you went to a music site to buy a single download for 99 cents, but instead you were offered the option to purchase the perpetual right to that song. With this right, you could download the song to your PC, your iPod, or your cell phone in whatever format was appropriate. And if you got a new computer, or if the digital-rights-management software protecting the file changed one day, you wouldn’t need to buy the song again. Your rights to the song would be stored online. Pay once, and it would be yours forever. If you lost it, you’d just download it again. Or you could share the song with a friend, or even resell it, depending on what rights you bought.
Interesting thinking, and I'm sure it would shake up things a bit. Well worth a read if you have an interest in this.
