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

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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
V. Conclusion: Can ThereBe a “Humane” DRM?As this essay demonstrates, the balanceof rights and public policies we havegrown accustomed to in our copyrightlawframework is being pulled in morethan one direction. On one side, digitaltechnologies seem to have the potentialto undermine and perhaps even destroythe incentive system we have constructedas part of society’s “copyrightbargain” with artists and authors. Onthe other side, DRM may have thepotential to destroy society’s part of thatbargain, by enabling copyright ownersto prevent even those unauthorized usesof copyrighted works that we recognizeto be lawful, all in the name of stoppingInternet-based infringement.On still another side, we have the technologycompanies, who are torn betweentheir desire to provide new platforms forcopyrighted works (and who themselvesvalue copyright) and their desire to preventthe open platforms of digital toolsand the Internet from becoming “closed”in a way that hinders or halts innovationswe haven’t thought of yet.To suggest a solution that fullyaddresses the needs of all the stakeholdersin the current digital copyrightdebate is not, strictly speaking, beyondthe scope of this essay; it remains, however,beyond the scope of this author.Nevertheless, I believe we can outlinesome approaches to the problems ofdigital copyright and DRM that havethe potential to harmonize the needs ofevery stakeholder group.In short, we can begin to talk aboutwhat a humane, balanced form of DRMmight look like, assuming for the sake ofdiscussion that such a form of DRM ispossible. 39The kind of DRM framework I imaginefor the sake of this discussion meets, atleast, the following set of criteria:A. For Copyright Owners: It mustlimit (or, ideally, prevent) large-scaleunauthorized redistribution of copyrightedworks over the Internet orany similar medium. In addition,it must allow a range of business31
Page 1 and 2: What Every CitizenShould Know About
Page 3 and 4: AcknowledgementsThis “DRM primer
Page 5 and 6: I. A Brief Introduction To DRMand i
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Page 11 and 12: II. What Does DRM Look Like?system
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What Every Citizen Should Know About DRM, aka - Public Knowledge

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