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Doctorow on DRM and Activism

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the accountability-is-dead dept.

Might E. Mouse writes "Cory Doctorow, co-editor of 'the world's most linked-to' blog, BoingBoing, spoke recently at an event in London, UK. Afterwords, he gave an interview with bit-tech discussing topics like DRM and the commercialization of podcasting. He was particularly scathing towards the BBC. From the article: 'If you're in the UK, hold the BBC to account. Why is it shipping the IMP, a DRM crippled player? Is there a point in the future where the BBC imagines that bits are going to get harder to copy? And that the IMP will solve its problem? Really, what the BBC is saying is that there's two ways you can get its content after it airs on the TV; one is that you can get it through the IMP and have a crippled experience, the other is that you can be a criminal.'"

3 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. There is no technical solution to a social problem by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No social problem ever had a technical solution. Not a single one. You can use netnanny to keep your kids from watching "bad" pages, but the kid will eventually find a way around. You can copy protect your content, but your user will sooner or later find a way around it.

    The problem is not that we enjoy being criminals. We don't do that out of spite. Not even because "content must be free" or similar rubbish. It's simply that we're used to listening to our music where we want, recording our favorite movies to watch them later, using our computers for the games we want to play, reading the news we want to read. That's what we want to do, that's what we enjoy doing.

    And if you turn this ability off, people will develop a way to do it regardless.

    Why was there a big outcry when CSS went onto Linux? Not because the CSS "encryption" was broken, but because the country codes were stripped together with it. And why were they stripped? Because we have no benefit from then, we don't want them, we don't need them, actually they did what we did NOT want to be done, so they were gone before they were implemented!

    Face it. People will do what they want to do. The question whether they will buy or copy content can only be answered by its price. Make it affordable, make the value match the price and people will rather buy than copy. Whether it's copy protected or not will only decide whether you piss off the buying customer and create another copyer, not whether you will sell or not.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Topic: My Barber, Sal, on Nuclear Proliferation by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...which is to say that as long as Cory Doctorow keeps buying a round at the quarterly new media circle jerk conferences he'll continue to get headline press-on-demand in the 'blogosphere.' Remember, it doesn't matter whether your 'art' is DRM'd up the yin-yang or a plaintext file, if a non-story with a link to your site doesn't periodically make it to the front page of slashdot, ain't nobody gonna know about it anyhow.

    Marketing sells. Always has. Cory has carefully nurtured a successful 'edgy-cyber-iconoclast' niche, and more power to him, but let's not get all noble and philosophical about it...

  3. Re:There is too technical solution to social probs by Crazy+Man+on+Fire · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Locks and car alarms are "good enough" solutions to prevent vehicle theft. Are they fool proof? Of course not. Am I inconvenienced by having to carry around keys and remember to lock/unlock doors? Yes. But I prefer not to have bums sleeping in my car, or people yanking anything in view simply because they can without any effort. And yes, I've had my car broken into (security defeated). It makes me want to find ways to make things more secured, not less.
    You're missing the point. I don't think anybody would argue that car locks and computer security measures are bad. These things prevent others from using your property. They don't prevent from using your own property. Your car's security system doesn't prevent it from driving on certain types of roads. Your computer security doesn't force you to pay $0.25 to log on each time you boot up. The problem with DRM is that it stops the consumer from using content that they paid for. The rights of the consumer are more important than the rights of the content providers. Unfortunately, most of the populace doesn't care or understand that they are losing out because they have their whiz-bang iPod and plasma TV.