[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [A2k] Re: [Wsis-pct] IP Justice Comment to IGF on Top Policy Issues for Athens

[Taran Rampersad]

Ian Brown wrote:
> Taran Rampersad wrote:
>> Litigation is the original mechanism of 'Digital Rights Management', and
>> it's what got us here in the first place - designing licenses so we
>> wouldn't have to litigate as much. Litigation costs money. I'm surprised
>> how many people are stuck on one implementation of Digital Rights
>> Management. 
>
> I do not think that the common usage of "DRM" includes the legal 
> enforcement of restrictions on the use of digital content. It's about 
> attempts at digital enforcement of restrictions on content use.
I agree. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a usage of 'DRM' that 
isn't what is being implemented. 'Moot' is another commonly misused 
word, and there's no such word as 'irrelevant'. 'Hacking' means solving 
problems, but it's commonly misused as well. And 'intellectual property' 
bands together all sorts of law where there is not much commonality - 
then there's 'piracy'... I'm still wondering when 'Open Source Politics' 
will allow me to legally to exploratory surgery on a politician, but I 
digress...

The common usage of 'DRM' doesn't. In fact, the common usage of 'DRM' is 
a manner of bypassing the costs of litigation. It's a simple matter of 
cost, not a bunch of people saying "Let's screw people over". Well, 
maybe there are a few out there saying the latter, but I wouldn't say 
that they are the norm of 'DRM' support as a technological implementation.

If litigation on an international level were cheaper, there probably 
would be less interest in a DRM mechanism. As it is, it's a sinkhole for 
large corporations (in my opinion) to toss money into in the hope that 
'piracy' will stop.

'DRM' is largely self limiting in a broader sense, in my opinion. It 
takes people getting angry sometimes for there to be a change, but 
becoming angry itself is not change of anything but a change in 
emotional state. Where that anger is directed is important. Cutting off 
the head of a dragon is sensible, but after all these years I would hope 
that the leaders of consumer rights would realize that they are dealing 
with a hydra.
>
> Technology is unlikely in most of our lifetimes to have the subtlety 
> of understanding of (most) courts of the validity of the copyright and 
> contract provisions expressed in these restrictions.
Future generations do depend on us to at least approach things properly, 
though. That something may not change in my lifetime is not something I 
would consider as something worth changing.
> This has led to the problems of which we are all aware with 
> anti-competitive, invasive, fair-use-destroying DRM systems.
The origin of copyright itself is similar. It was about people producing 
things, and people with more money than them selling the same things to 
the detriment of the original creator. So they gave the creator rights 
to protect themselves financially. But then the people with the money 
and networks merged with the creators; paying the creators to own the 
*copyright* itself. So the *copyright* became 'property' in a legal 
sense, when it was only originally a matter of rights to use what one 
created and to assure that others could not use it to the financial 
detriment of the creator. But it created a new commodity.

I've wondered openly what would happen if legal entities could not own 
copyrights or patents. We might have less people being dismissed just 
before they retire, for one...

Anyway, the original idea behind copyright has been subverted, I think, 
and the imperfection is what we're dwelling on because people before our 
lifetime might have said that it won't change in their lifetime. Yet 
now, the internet has leveled the playing field, and the law, in it's 
infinite wisdom, allows both an individual and a large legal entity to 
have the same costs associated with litigating against people who 
infringe upon the creator - where the creator, of course, has rights 
that haven't really been defined very well.

So in a lot of ways, the magic phrase 'DRM' can mean good things for 
people with small and medium enterprises because it allows them to 
compete with large corporations for the same markets without a high cost 
of litigation. That certainly doesn't make the implementation just. But 
it means that until we figure out what we're going to do with this old 
problem we've been playing with for generations, creators themselves 
*feel* that they can compete a bit better in the market as it exists 
today. They may *feel* that it mitigates their risk. They may even have 
to use something along those lines to get a loan from a bank simply to 
give the bank a warm fuzzy feeling.

TANSTAAFL.

-- 
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago
cnd at knowprose.com

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