Some interesting reading on Digital Rights Management(DRM).
James Governor links to a BBC article where Britain's National Consumer Council is concerned that anti-piracy efforts are eroding consumer rights.
Second, he has his own post called What About My Copy Rights? Towards A Declaration of Digital Independence. Fascinating stuff.
Why not appropriate the language of Copyright, by reappropriating the meaning of a phrase? By paying an artist or rights holder we must have some rights in turn.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people that pay for digital content are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Copy Rights, that among these are the right to play licensed content on any device, to backup said content as the licensee sees fit, and the pursuit of digital happiness.
DRM and copyright issues are as thorny for me as CRAPWARE and rootkit issues. No one is going to come out of the briar patch unscathed. Why? Because common sense and practicality have lost the battle to greed.
We're in an age where technology and what is possible through the use of it has outstripped the mechanisms (laws and the adherence to them) that we have used for ages to govern the commerce and the public interest around what we now call content. (I love buzz words.) We're also in an age where the technology is seductive as hell and easy to sell and the potential for profiting from it is higher than it has ever been.
Roll back the clock (not that far) and I don't think you'd find too many lawyers willing to go after a family book sharing circle, or my grandmother passing her record collection down to me and my sisters. Why? It was unenforceable and therefore made no practical or common sense to do so. But now that monitoring and enforcing violations is as easy as the sharing of the content.
So the sexiness of what is possible applies to both the content user and the content provider. And the allure seems to be ever increasing and is allowing the big boys to build a pretty unassailable fortress of new laws and restrictions that keeps being fed by everyone rushing to the digital cash register to get their content fix. Bottom line, as long as consumers keep feeding the beast, there will be a beast.
This whole ball of wax got sticker long before iPods and digital content when the US (and other countries) fell prey to the content providers wishes (read lobbying) to change the copyright laws and extend the length of time someone can hold a copyright. The horse left the barn then. As well meaning as declarations and protests to change things are today, they run into headlong into that fact. I happen to believe that those changes to the copyright laws obviated the intent of the US Constitution and have pretty much eliminated the legal concept of First Sale and is quickly threatening the concept of Fair Use. (Here's a primer on that if you're interested.)
Let's talk about the concept of First Sale and my grandmother's record collection. Basically my grandmother paid the piper the day she bought a record. What she did the next day with that record then became her business, not the copyright holder's. Common sense. We are so far away from that it today's digital age that you need a time machine to remember it.
So, my bottom line is this. Declarations, protests, and conferences discussing the matter may be well meaning but the horse is never coming back to the barn. Consumer hunger for content will keep feeding the beast and the beast is going to keep growing. And until all of the content providers decide to sit down together and slice up the pie and share in the spoils (like that's ever going to happen) we are all going to be facing one DRM nightmare after another, be forced to pick our poison...er...provider, and complain.
But we'll still be looking or listening to content.
