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

[Peter Eckersley]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 10:44:24AM -0400, James Love wrote:
> I am wondering if the emphasis on the term DRM is the wrong one.   I
> believe the objections are partly about technical protection measures
> (TPMs), which make it impossible to access works.   The various
> versions of the GPL are themselves types of DRMs

I think there would be far less confusion if we could all agree that DRM and
TPM are 3-letter words that mean the same thing.  The acronym DRM was invented
to describe technical systems for controlling access to and preventing copying
of copyrightable files.  Including the GPL and other free software licenses in
the same term, just because they involve the management of digital rights, is
in completely contradiction to the widespread usage of that acronym.

I think I came to off-list agreement with Taran about this, too.

-- 
Peter Eckersley
Department of Computer Science   &                  mailto:pde at cs.mu.oz.au 
IP Research Institute of Australia             http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pde
The University of Melbourne