[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [Wsis-pct] IP Justice Comment to IGF on Top Policy Issues for Athens

[Taran Rampersad]

Dr. Francis MUGUET wrote:
>
> Dear Taran
>> Isn't the problem then with the German Law rather than the document?
> the recent German law ( transcription of the European directive )
> is even more repressive than the French one, and does not
> include DRM interoperability.
> I don(t know the legislative status of this law.
> Any info from Germany ?
>
> It would be good that all Europeans unite their efforts
> against those laws/
And yet, Europe is not the center of the world. At least, not outside of 
Europe. :-)
>>
>> I think it's dangerous to dismiss DRM the concept. 
> It is the reverse, the DRM concept is dangerous, because
> it limits Freedom and would extend to digital objects what
> is valid for material things.
> Digital objects are in nature different from material objects in
> the sense that they cannot be replicated, and "consuming" them
> does not destroy them.
> Therefore to simply extend concepts originating from category
> of objects to another is just not waranted.
> It is a question of semantic and basic philosophy.
>
> then
> First, a obvious danger is that
> DRMs are going to lead into a police state.
Whoa. Hold on a minute. DRM is a name. It's an acronym. It's the 
implementation that is dangerous, not the name. Attack the disease not 
the symptoms. Digital Rights Management, as a concept, is not a bad 
thing. Digital Rights Management, as it is being used, is a bad thing.

Think of fruit. Sometimes you get sweet oranges. Sometimes you get sour 
oranges. Do not damn the sweet oranges with the sour oranges because 
some people are selling sour oranges.
>
> Second, there is a belief that in order to be financially
> compensated you need DRMs, this is *wrong*.
I know that this is wrong right *now*, but I don't believe in burning 
bridges in the future. I believe that utilizing the phrase 'Digital 
Rights Management' in such negative connotations may get the short term 
attention that people are seeking, but the long term impacts do not 
necessarily fall under 'good'. In fact, I think it sucks as much as DRM 
itself. We cannot attack the problem at the same level of thinking which 
created it, to paraphrase Albert Einstein. Change levels.
> Imagination must spent towards exploring non-DRM based
> schemes instead of trying to implement DRMs that are going
> to be one day or another cracked.
Again, people are stuck on sour oranges. The GPL itself could be called 
DRM. What the criticism is against is *how* Digital Rights are managed. 
To take into account that future generations are going to have to deal 
with what we screw up, as those before us have done, we need to make 
sure we don't write ourselves into corners. In 100 years, DRM could be 
implemented in a much different way. We desperately need to take a long 
view here; there is a danger of intellectual incest if we go around 
saying that the name of a thing is bad when the actions of the thing in 
question are really what is bad.
> One non-DRM based is the "Global Patronage" scheme,
> that has been described on this list, but they might be others,
> as I hinted in other posts ( Artic Monkeys, etc... )
Which is, in fact, a form of Digital Rights Management. It's just not 
invasive, and is generally a better term. We're talking now about 
documents that I believe that everyone wishes to last. Don't talk about 
DRM (Geez, I'm sounding a little like RMS here), talk about what the 
implementations of DRM do. If freedom is really the issue here - and I 
believe it is - then the document should be human-centric, not 
acronym-centric. We call this the PCT caucus because we don't like the 
phrase 'intellectual property'.

How odd it is to use another ambiguous term so carelessly. How odd that 
when we make issue of the differences between Patents, Copyrights and 
Trademarks that we forget that there ARE Digital Rights, that this isn't 
just about software licensing, and that there are human beings involved 
who deserve their Digital Rights defended... It is not their fault that 
the present implementation of what is called DRM is a sour orange. Shall 
we chop down the tree? I say NO! I say tell them that the fruit from 
that tree is sour, and show them a sweeter tree. Or shall we stamp 
'orange' and DRM out of their vocabulary like language nazis?

This is not about Europe. This is not about Korea. This is about the 
world, but it's not about the world, it's about people. It's about 
rights. It is about Digital Rights. It's about the right to manage our 
own digital rights as we see fit. No matter how hard one tries, DRM as a 
concept cannot be destroyed only because there is a semblance of 
something good in it that people see. So attack what is wrong with it.

This shouldn't be too difficult for people to grasp, I think. To 
clarify, I disagree with DRM in the present instantiation, but I agree 
with DRM such as GPL and Creative Commons Licenses. If you're stuck in 
the rut of thinking that DRM can only be one thing, then you can be 
assured that DRM will change it's name and come back another time, and 
we'll get to have this conversation all over again over EIEIO. The name 
is a symptom. Attack the disease, don't use the name. We may have use 
for that name yet.


-- 
Taran Rampersad
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