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3 years ago
I think the main issue is whether we want to proceed down the road of treating copyright law as a default protection provided by government that can be made either less or more restrictive through contract. Creative Commons provides flexible, less restrictive ways for copyright owners to license their content. Should we allow more restrictive arrangements through TPM? I think so, but consumer awareness and expectation will be the defining market response as to whether a TPM succeeds (with or without a DMCA). Maybe this means that like computer software, all digital media will have shrinkwrap licenses in which purchase equals acceptance, and circumvention of DRM means breach of contract.
3 years ago
That's all well and good, but I think it's important to keep in mind that contracts are governed by contract law. Contract law has different rules from copyright law-- there are no statutory damages, and you can't be thrown in jail for willfully breaking a contract. Moreover, in contract law, there is a concept of efficient breach-- there are circumstances where something is technically against contract, but the other party doesn't bother to enforce the terms because it doesn't actually harm his or her interests.
TPMs ought to be treated the same way. They're a way of reminding consumers of their contractual obligations (to the extent it even does that-- again, TPMs don't always reflect consumer obligations) but the human should always have the discretion of circumventing the TPM.
Incidentally, what's really interesting about the software example is that TPMs was tried in the software industry, and they failed so badly that most companies abandoned them in the mid-1990s. What they found was that it did absolutely nothing to prevent piracy (since a few skilled hackers would crack the software and share the cracked version with everyone else) but that it did inconvenience a lot of their paying customers by making arbitrary restrictions on how the software was used. What the software industry ultimately realized was that the people who were paying them for a license weren't their enemies and it was foolish to treat them that way.
My prediction is that the same will happen with TPMs for music and video. It's already obvious that they're doing absolutely nothing to stop piracy. At some point consumers will start getting irritated by the fact that (for example) their iTunes Music Store songs can't be played on any MP3 player other than an iPod. Music industry execs will eventually realize their customers would be a lot happier buying music unencumbered with restrictive, arbitrary, and ultimately ineffectual copy protection.
3 years ago
For example, the terms of the DRM on DVDs are spelled out in a secret 50-page contract between the "DVD Copy Control Association" and the DVD player vendor, and another between the DVDCCA and the DVD pressing plant, and another between the DVDCCA and the publisher of the DVD.
I think most DRM systems would die in the market if consumers were actually notified of the restrictions involved. It seems that the vendors agree; they document every other part of their products.
3 years ago
3 years ago
Although Slashdot's blurb read something like, "Here's a funny article about DRM . . . ," giving the impression that it was satire, in actual fact the author was perfectly serious. I also read the article expecting something a la "The Onion," but Mr. Ross is not joking.
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