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UK Government Advised to Promote and Adopt DRM
aking137 writes "From ZDNet, the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) are recommending '...actively promoting the development and spread of global DRM-related standards' on the grounds that 'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'. Also in the article: 'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'" The report (pdf) is online.
Because the general populace HATES getting entertainment in a medium of their choice for free. What they REALLY want is a lot of constraints on using their entertainment purchases, and really aggressive copyright holders to sue them when they think they might have stepped out of line.
Oh yeah, need DRM in there quick or this "internet" thing will never catch on.
"The upcoming boom in automobiles is likely to fail unless we install governors on all cars to enforce speed limits."
Reading this, does anyone else go, hunh?
"Digital Rights Management and micro-payments are becoming 'make or break' issues for the whole of the broadband value chain," said Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, in a statement.
The value of broadband isn't determined by which businesses deign to offer pay services requiring a high speed pipe. The value of broadband is based entirely on what the end user is willing to pay for a high-speed pipe to their house. I'm sick of these rat-bastard marketroids who keep trying to redefine the utility of internet connectivity based on their [TV/radio/other mass-media] mindset: "we talk, you listen (and buy)". Broadband is doomed unless they can sell stuff to us? Broadband is doomed unless they can force us to pay-per-[view/listen/read] for the media we "buy"? Broadband is doomed unless they get to keep our credit card number on file to make paying them [easy/automatic/mandatory]? Please...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
should read
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter if more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Water, electricity... bandwidth?
Water and electricity are commonly billed on a usage basis -- you pay $X per gallon of water, you pay $Y per megawatt of electricity. This causes certain actions, such as conservation of water and electricity, which are beneficial as these are limited resources.
Bandwidth is also a limited resource, and as it is being more and more dependent upon by business and government...
If people were paying for bandwidth like they do for many other utilies, conservation of bandwidth would be achieved and much of this piracy would be limited. When Danny's father gets the internet bill for $200, Danny's P2P software is getting uninstalled. If Danny leaves all the lights on in the house, or leaves all the faucets running water all day every day, we can easily see that his water and electricity bills would skyrocket and he would pay for his usage, as well as shortening the supply of these two shared resources for others especially in times of limited resources.
The days of flat-rate internet usage (should be) numbered. If I download a 650 MB ISO image of RedHat, or a 650 MB ISO of a pirated version of MS Office XP, it doesn't matter, similarly it doesn't matter if Danny is taking 30-minute showers or is just running the shower into the drain for 30 minutes.
Maybe that's what the UK should be looking at instead of all this DRM nonsense. The primary reason people download music is because they can get it "for free" since they are already paying their flat rate for internet access. If it actually costs them (in terms of $Z per MB) perhaps they will think twice about both downloading and potentially more expensive uploading of these files.
And maybe that will help some of these god-awful websites clean up their massively over-imaged websites.
MORTAR COMBAT!
AOL Time Warner
British Music Rights
Universal Studios
Panasonic
And my favorite: "The Work Foundation" (a fully owned subsidiary of The Human Fund) Source: Broadband Stakeholder Group's Website
And remember, never attribute to studpidity that which can more accurately be attributed to a global conspiracy.
You're all assuming that this advisory group is made up of ISPs. It's not, it's made up of content distributors.
The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed
Yeah, because if people massively use peer-to-peer, then they probably want their representatives to put an end to that. Or perhaps they don't?