What's really wrong with DRM?

What's really wrong with DRM?

Posted Mar 4, 2004 8:43 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524)
In reply to: What's really wrong with DRM? by elanthis
Parent article: The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright

Copyrigthed material are state-enforced monopolies. If we ended this state-enforced monopoly, and instead let private actors agree on whichever agreement they like, I'd agree with you. The problem is, increasingly copyrigth-holders want to have their cake - and eat it too.

They want the state to intervene on their behalf;

• They want the state to enforce their monopoly. (aka copyright)
• They want the state to prevent circumvention of their faulty technologies. (aka DMCA)
• They want the state to prolong their monopolies indefinitely, the last 40 years congress prolonged copyrigth 11 times.
• They want the right to subpoena the names and adresses of anyone simply *suspected* of breaking their copyright.
• They want the state to forbid consumers from posessing general-purpose equipment (such as computers without DRM or recording-equipment) on the theory that such equipment *could* be used for copyright-infringement. (all tools *could* be used for illegal activities, that's a poor reason to forbid them...)
• They want the state to license spectrum to them, so that they can have a monopoly also on one of the most important marketing-channels, namely radio (and to some degree tv)

But they do *not* want the state to *ever* intervene on behalf of the consumers;

• They do *not* want the state to demand that Fair use remains possible.
• They do *not* want the state to demand that works actually become available when copyright expire. (all DRM-technologies I've seen comes with no expiry-mechanism whatsoever)
• They do *not* want the state to tear down artificial barriers to free trade, such as "region encoding"

That's the thing I have a problem with. The way I see it *either* the state should stay out of the picture, and let people trade in a free market. *or* the state should enforce both sides of the "balance" of copyright-law.

The current trend, where the state increasingly want to enforce only one side of the equation, is intolerable.

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