Re: [dvd-discuss] Digital Rights Management Gedanken Experiments

["Steve Hosgood" <steve(at)caederus.com>]

<microlenz@earthlink.net> wrote:
> As I started my morning commute onto the vast parking lots known 
> as the LA Freeways, I pondered some of the implications of DRM 
> upon "normal usage" of things. By Normal, I mean as we have 
> used things before.
> 

Maybe I'm just reiterating what we keep on saying here, but thinking up
acceptable DRM systems is the wrong way to go. We should be working out
how to demonise the whole concept of DRM in the eyes of the public. Somehow,
DRM needs to be seen by Joe Public as on a par with child pornography.

Nothing less will kill it sufficiently dead.

There are no 'Digital Rights' so there can be no 'Digital Rights Management'.
The only rights a copyright holder has are:
1) The right to prevent others making money from copying his/her works.
2) The right to prevent others cutting into his/her profits by copying
   those works.
..these apply just as much to works on digital media as they do to analogue.

See Napster. They were judged to have copied digital works from CDs illegally.
There are no anti-copy systems on CDs, but the case was decided in favour of
the "rights holders". End of story.

No need for DRM then. Double end of story!

                          -------------------------

Gedanken experiments on how to demonise the entire concept of DRM, and make any
researcher who dabbles in the field look like a child molester are welcome.

--

Steve Hosgood                               |
steve@caederus.com                          | "A good plan today is better
Phone: +44 1792 203707 + ask for Steve      |   than a perfect plan tomorrow"
Fax:   +44 70922 70944                      |              - Conrad Brean
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