EU Encouraging Standardized DRM, Licensing

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The European Commission is trying to encourage a standard licensing and DRM scheme for all of Europe, as well as 'cooperation procedures' and 'codes of conduct' for ISPs, copyright holders, and customers. No legislation has been proposed yet, but the 'cooperation procedures' sound like a push for an EU version of the DMCA Takedown Notices, which are already routinely sent to people outside the US. While simplified licensing might be nice, it's interesting that they don't appear to understand the inherent tension between standardization, interoperability and DRM — break once, copy everywhere."

Comments

Re:this cloud has a silver lining though

[bigtomrodney]

Actually EU law supersedes national law when it conflicts. This has been upheld on many occasions
European Law Supremacy

The Fallacy of DRM: a summary

[Morgaine]

DRM relies on encryption.

Encryption is designed to secure communication between Alice and Bob while denying it to the evil Eve.

In DRM, Bob and Eve are one and the same person.

In other words, DRM seeks to give a person access to an item while denying him/her access to that item. This is not a recipe for success.

The proponents of DRM seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the strengths and weaknesses of encryption, and so are attempting to use it in a manner that is inherently weak. The fact that DRM schemes are so frequently and so rapidly broken by people with minimal cracking resources is a clear pointer to this.

For further information, Google on Schneier.