DRM / IP

From Ars Technica:

......the growing backlash against DRM is causing dissension in the pro-DRM ranks. Paul Sweeting's excellent report on the DRS conference records the frustrations of the DRM community at the tactics of the content industry. They apparently feel that an overzealous content industry is abusing DRM; this is a bit like Smith & Wesson complaining that bullets can kill.

When DRM proponents start pointing fingers and attempting to separate the theory (really, the ideology) from the practice, we have to stop and ask: what's going on here? It appears that players in the DRM ecosystem know the tide is turning against them because DRM is punishing the wrong people, namely the folks who are buying DRM-laden content. This is bad for their business, because a DRM backlash could harm DRM peddlers.

We'd agree with Ars T that the backlash is coming....in fact its already started in that now most people see piracy as an acceptable approach in the face of industry actions. But straws in the wind (see our posts here and here for example) from large media companies also indicate they see the onrushing backlash train....

Hold on to your seats, this is going to be bumpy ride - but the endgame is not in doubt. The industry will eventually have to make peace with its own customers, and craft usage rules and prices that dissuade the majority of people from adopting the piracy business model. Banning and Prohibition have never worked in the past and in this networked age it is even less likely to work now.

Seen on Ars Technica

....a few weeks back the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) contacted Scribd, a site that allows users to post documents in the same way that YouTube allows people to post videos. SFWA alleged that numerous works on Scribd violated copyrights of SFWA members and requested that these works be taken down. They were. But it quickly became apparent that the USS 1701-SFWA had a crack in its dilithium crystals.

Stories began to emerge from the blogosphere, and not the sort of Stranger in a Strange Land stuff that the SFWA exists to promote. Nick Senger, an eighth-grade teacher and promoter of teen literacy, found his sci-fi bibliography targeted in the crackdown. "I'm not sure what the SFWA has to gain by requesting that the list be removed," he notes. "That list does nothing but encourage people to buy their books."

Of all the people you would have thought would grok this new media, new world stuff, Sci Fi writers would stand out. Can't wait for the list to be resurrected...a 300+ list of Sci Fi books to read is a global treasure.

This is certainly not the answer to all things......another swallow in the great summer of discontent with IP/DRM content.