Plenty of reverberations set off by Lloyd's post which I wrote about yesterday. The comments to his blog took off and there's a lot there worth reading. Lloyd's post began:
I just had lunch with someone who works for a broadcaster and is wrestling with the idea of distributing content online and we both agreed that what’s missing from the whole DRM debate is a strong case for “just enough DRM".
One of the comments I found most interesting was Tom Loosemore's:
I am the ’some[one] from a broadcaster’ to whom Lloyd refers above. I’m afraid I didn’t come away with the same conclusion wrt our DRM conversation. For me DRM remains a suite of technologies delivering negative consumer value, and as such I can only view it as a a short-term irritant.
In the long term, the near-magical ability of digital tech to make and share perfect copies at near-zero marginal cost will be embraced by successful media businesses - businesses which with probably employ wholly new business models. That said, those new business models are looking decidedly thin on the ground right now. Thus, many rights holders are acting logically in demanding their content is locked up by DRM, as is perceived to be required to support current business models.
This ‘use DRM or nothing goes online’ reality leaves me with a quandary:
1) I could retire to the sidelines and wave ‘DRM is Evil’ placards. Some people I respect hugely have taken this option.
2) Or I could conclude that it is my employer’s best interests to ensure we use the least-bad DRM solution as a necessary evil. That way we’ve at least got a stake in what will be a very messy game, and millions of people will be able to enjoy online access to content which would otherwise not be available to them.
So I would restate Lloyd’s question thus:
If you’ve got to use DRM as a precondition to allowing access to content online, what’s the least-bad flavour?
The hardest questions are often the ones you hate being asked.
BTW, I say that if you still answer ‘none’ to the above, I say you’re copping out of the debate. After all, placard-waving is much easier if you can still access stuff via darknets. Most people can’t or won’t, so in effect you’re denying the majority of people any online access to content which you remain free to enjoy. …
In his second comment to Lloyd's post, Lee says :
… a debate is needed for sure. … The almost total lack of consumer knowledge about the DRM debate (ORG: where are you by the way?) is why we must not trot out classical economic fallacies like ‘the market will decide’ or ‘consumers seem happy with it’. … On the one hand, we need a reasoned debate to involve the public in the story. On the other, those trying to fight DRM in its totality need to get their act together and think about how to bring about systemic change … Maybe part of the answer lies in not calling the least-bad implementations DRM, so we can differentiate between attempts to create mechanisms that open up new distribution channels and deliver value, and Hollywood’s drive to squeeze every last drop of profit out of an unsustainable business model and retain their position of economic power and cultural hegemony.
Doc Searls blogged about Lloyd's posting here. Shelley's posting, Debate on DRM, has some of the best quality comments I've seen in a while.
Required reading is Kevin Marks' 5 short arguments against DRM; his latest on DRM is here.
The UK Parliament's All Party Internet Group has a page dedicated to its Inquiry into Digital Rights Management. David Weinberger's submission to the latter, 'Fair but Wrong', is here and his short essay, 'Copy Protection is a Crime', is here.
In an update to his post, Lloyd notes:
… no-one - and I mean no-one - responded to the main question: is there an application of DRM (or at least something that looks like DRM) out there which actually works (and the implication in there, if you didn’t get it, was that every time I’ve encountered it it does not, OK?). The only sites referred to were emusic (which doesn’t use DRM at all), AllOfMP3 (which, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t send royalties to artists) and Wippit (which I believe does use DRM, just not everywhere, or at least with a light touch). It would appear that the answer to my original question is a resounding “no” from this little survey.
