What Every Citizen Should Know About DRM, aka - Public Knowledge

What Every Citizen Should Know About DRM,a.k.a. “Digital Rights Management”Collectively, these efforts may hurt citizens in atleast three ways:❚ First, they may swing the balance of rights incopyright so much further in the direction of thecopyright owners that, in effect, they make the“fair use” and other balancing provisions of theCopyright Act unusable and thus irrelevant inpractical terms.❚ Secondly, to the extent that these efforts resultin new limitations on personal computers andconsumer electronics, citizens may soon findthemselves in a world in which these toolsempower them much less than they once did.❚ A third, related point is this: the computer revolutionand the remarkable advances we’ve seen incomputer technology over the last quarter centuryhave been dependent largely on so-called“open architectures.” Personal computers are saidto have “open architectures” because you can buyor build new devices that the computers can usein new ways, and because you can program themto do things that their designers never thoughtof. Moreover, the Internet itself, through its“end-to-end” principle, is another example of anopen architecture — because its underlying principlesare decentralized, simple, and robust, it’spossible for inventors to come up with new usesfor it. A notable example of the latter is theWorld Wide Web itself, which originated nearlytwo decades after the Internet was invented.In sum, then, it’s not just copyright-law intereststhat are at stake — or even citizens’ relationship tocopyrighted works. DRM, if too broadly and indiscriminatelyapplied, may throttle the advance of personal-computertechnology itself. And this wouldaffect you as a citizen even if you never once had thedesire to download a song or TV show or movie.29