Digital Rights Management: A ‘crime against society’?
That’s what David Weinberg says in his essay in the new Wired. My own take is similar to that of TechDirt. No need to make DRM a crime. The real punishment is inflicted on the shareholders of companies that use DRM cluelessly. Of course, when DRM interferes with access by the disabled, then it should be a crime. Here’s an idea. Maybe some of the DRM zealots could don blindfolds and spend a month as “blind” people.
Meanwhile here’s some good reading for members of the Open eBook Forum–a few words from TechDirt:
DRM products shrink your market, rather than expand it. It makes innovation slower, it harms consumers, and makes your products less valuable. It also opens up a wonderful opportunity for competitors to come along and give consumers what they want rather than meekly trying to hide behind DRM.
Of course, without a practical consumer e-book format, the OeBF hasn’t even reached the point where it has existing competitors. If publisher-members want DRM–well, the technology can be reasonably used, via a Noring-style approach. But they’d better not overdo it. Otherwise perhaps someday, when young voters finally rid Congress of the old coots who gave us the DMCA, then Weinberg’s proposal to criminalize DRM may not seem so far-fetched.
Leave a Reply