Will DRM Strike Out?

When markets are in a state of flux, it’s very hard for the last generation of players to adjust to the new reality. 

It would be fun watching the entertainment/music/publishing industry kill itself off by alienating its present and future customers if it wasn’t (a) so sad and (b) such a gross pain in the neck.  Every time we buy a new piece of computer or electronic hardware or software – or think of acquiring a new CD, DVD, or piece of computer software, we have to look to see what new Intellectual Property Protection the Old Guard has instituted, all in its misguided efforts to turn back the clock.

Meanwhile, as Dan Gillmor, of the San Jose Mercury so often and so brilliantly writes (most recently at http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4641661.htm), Congress and the courts keep trying to give away our Constitutional rights – you do have some, you know.  For example:

When you buy a book, a recorded movie, or some music, you have a limited right to do some copying for your own use and convenience as well as for various kinds of intellectual sharing.  Otherwise, for example, we wouldn’t be able to quote a book or the lyrics of a song, in writing a novel or a scholarly work.  Were you planning to give up that right?

When you’ve bought and paid for a piece of music (a CD or a cassette tape), you’ve always had the right to make another copy for your own use, on the theory that you only had one pair of ears and listening to it in another form wouldn’t be breaking the copyright by listening to two copies at once.  But the music industry wants to throw out Napster and other communal Music Sharing on the Internet and instead offer you a very limited form that allows you to download the music to your computer, but not its transfer to another device.  I wasn’t planning, music companies, to take my desktop computer on the plane.

The real problem here is that their business model is broken and instead of doing the hard work of figuring out what the new business model might be and investing in it, these companies would rather bribe politicians to enforce a fantasy version of the world where the old rules (and business models) still work.  Are you surprised that this isn’t going to work?

Before you rush to send me a flame mail, let me assure you that I do not think intellectual effort should go unrewarded (although I sure haven’t seen any emanating from the music companies, who haven’t figured out that they should use sharing on the Internet as free advertising and change their paid model to something more valued – maybe some songs that are only available on the paid version – or discounts for related purchases or whatever. 

And please remember that I give away this newsletter of my own choice (my perhaps valuable and certainly protectable intellectual property) because I believe that showing you my areas of interest and my brain at work is much more likely to result in interesting and varied business opportunities (and the revenue they bring) than selling the newsletter and paying for the cost of marketing it. 

Even Microsoft agrees that digital rights management is a pointless exercise based on an out-of-date business model --- Microsoft researchers, that is.  In their research, they found that digital rights management may act as a sufficient disincentive to commerce to cause its practitioners economic loss as consumers move to alternative choices.  Microsoft itself is still busily trying to provide DRM to the entertainment industry.  You can find an article on the MS-sponsored research here http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/darknet5.doc. 

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