3G phones: Send Anywhere, But Not Anything

glengyron writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the success of an Australian company in developing Digital Rights Management for the next generation of mobile phones. Imagine if you could only forward email once, or not at all: these are the kind of restrictions being built into the next generaion of mobile phones. Read the article here. ODRL? Orwellian Digital Rights Language."

Comments

Disney has something to teach RIAA

[anagama]

From the article:

"If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will," Eisner said.

This after Eisner was quoted as saying Disney will not let "the threat of piracy keep it from aggressively pursuing business strategies based on new digital technologies, even if that meant rethinking its current business models."

Someone should forward this to our friends in the music industry.

proper definition of "DRM"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please stop defining it DRM as digital rights management, and start referring to it under the more proper name of digital restriction(s) management?

I got this new definition from Robert Thompson.

Holy crap!

[Flamerule]

Did anyone else notice this?

PR's four engineers built the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) language in about two years before version 1 was commercially adopted by Nokia and others in preference to Microsoft's XrML standard, in part due to political reasons, says chief scientist Renato Iannella. [emphasis added]

A (semi-)major news outlet ran a story with DRM defined as Digital Restrictions Management, with "Restrictions" replacing the original "Rights". That is extremely fucking cool.

At least, I've never seen this before. Is it just me?

This could be a Good Thing

[Xeger]

The introduction of cameras and multimedia SMS in the 3G market has given rise to privacy concerns, as we have seen in recent Slashdot coverage.

Consider for a moment that when people could be taking pictures of you with their cell phones at any time and at any place, some basic rights management within this very limited domain of cell phones and messaging might be extremely beneficial.

Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having. Do I want that image to reach my parents? Do I want my ex girlfriend to see it? How about my co-workers and enemies? I'd rather not, thanks.

By giving the sender some basic control over where the content goes once it leaves his phone, we would be enhancing the sender's privacy. And, of course, all such "DRM" technologies must be taken with a grain of salt, because you and I and any other techie worth his weight in 3.5" floppies knows that any copy-protection scheme is breakable. The DRM technologies introduced to date have been far from confidence-inspiring. So DRM within this domain is more of a basic privacy tool than an Orwellian move to own your cell phone.

As for my preferred intepretation of the DRM moniker -- I've always been fond of "Digital Rights Removal Mechanism."

ODRL - Rights expression language

[cesther]

ODRL is a XML based rights expression language. So it will allow you to express a license of rights that could be considered Orwellian.

It could also be used in many positive and creative ways (an exercise left for the reader).

But it is not an access control technology (DRM) in of itself.

There is another XML based rights expression language being pushed by DRM vendor ContentGuard called XrML - which they own but 'freely' licence.

The real question is: Can a rights expression language express unregulated uses?
What should the defacto position on which an instance of expressed rights (in ORML or XrML) be?
Can a rights expression language express that the content is no longer covered by copyright in the EU?

Larry Lessig's Free Culture discusses the unregulated side of this issue.