Slashdot Mirror
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."
How we know is more important than what we know.
The only problem is that standardized DRM is a pipe dream.
DRM relies on a secret in order to work. If the DRM is standardized, that secret it out and the DRM is broken.
This, of course, presumes that the purpose of DRM is to "protect" content. We all know that the only purpose of DRM is to lock consumers into a product and restrict consumer choice. So standardizing DRM is something that companies want to avoid at all costs.
I think you are looking too much at the short term.
Having more interoperable DRM will be better than having non-interoperable DRM right now, but it will only delay the real goal of no DRM at all.
I'd prefer to put up with a short term spate of incompatability, shortly followed by no DRM at all (which is actually already starting to happen, at least in with music) than a half-assed sort-of-better solution that in reality will never fully work as intended.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz