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Aboriginal Archive Uses New DRM
ianare writes "An application that gives fresh new meaning to 'digital rights management' has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians. It relies on a user's profile to control access to a multimedia archive. The need to create profiles based on a user's name, age, sex and standing within their community comes from traditions over what can and cannot be viewed. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families. These requirements threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also about how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people, and where they were situated."
This doesn't sound like DRM. It sounds like access control.
I've read TFA. It seems to me that this is just the result of the very will of those people to respect their own traditions and that this whole thing was made only after it had turned up that they would not accept the archive as easily without provisions for preventing potential embarassment. They seem to be doing it willingly. I'm not sure it's about superstition, it's just about social habits. You think it's silly? Fine, you have the right to have an opinion, but I'd say it's their business. And I don't feel there's a harm, unless TFA is grossly inaccurate, concerning the situation there.
Ezekiel 23:20
Before complaining about DRM, RTFA and spend a bit of time thinking why this was done. The culture in question has a complicated set of rules about who can and cannot see certain images, rituals, etc. The anthropologist wanted to show them to the larger world without violating the rules of the culture that produced them. But wasn't the only reason: the restrictions also allows you the visitor to better understand the culture. Why? You might think that the best way to experience that culture to be shown all of it at once, but you should consider that men who live in this culture never get to see certain things. Think of it as a simulation of a culture. Use it to reflect on the assumptions you make about who is entitled to what information.
So, assuming you have an S/O, you wouldn't mind if there were YouTube videos of you doing the linen fandango with him/her? For that matter, why do you even bother to wear clothing outdoors when the temperature is warm?
Sounds unrelated, but it isn't once you dig deeper...
See, there are, at base, some things which any given existing culture likes to keep secret. Sometimes it's simple stuff like sex, sometimes it's complex stuff like not viewing your deceased relatives for fear that their ghost will come in the night and tear up your house.
Just because someone holds the beliefs that they shouldn't view the rituals of the opposite gender, or that they shouldn't eyeball videos of "hot cheating amateur couples!" on a website, doesn't mean they're supposed to go all Aboriginal or Amish in their lifestyle. And just because you think it's silly doesn't mean that they cannot and/or shouldn't self-censor as individuals or as a community. Odds are very good that this Aboriginal resource DB was rigged by request from the community itself, so why the hullabaloo?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.
You look at an example of why someone wants an access control system like this and you still have to ask?
I gotta say, when I clicked through on this story, I was mostly expecting comments along positive lines. This seemed to me as well to be an interesting story of how the old and the new can coexist in new models. I really didn't expect all this player-hating. Weird. I didn't realize we had so many technological absolutists here.
For an interesting story with a similar theme, I suggest this Wired article from '99.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Depending on which set of research you wish to believe, they've been living this way for the better part of 40,000 years. Their scholars are not doing anything their social customs haven't done for a very, very long time. Whiteman scholars may already have access to everything, but that is not what they're concerned about. This is an enabling technology for them, in that it allows them to store their currently verbal history for the long term in a way that is in accordance with their traditions and for their own people. It is so their own people don't accidentally look at the wrong thing in their tradition. They don't care about you and I.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton