DRM Take II — Digital Personal Property

Diabolus Advocatus writes "Ars Technica has an article on a new form of DRM being considered by the IEEE. It's called Digital Personal Property and although it removes some of the drawbacks of conventional DRM it introduces new drawbacks of its own. From the article: 'Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects. For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.'"

Comments

Re:The miss the point

[cpt kangarooski]

It needn't be one rich guy. It could be a group of several (or hundreds, or thousands, or more) people of more moderate means. If an author had a thousand fans, each fan could chip in $5 to an escrow account, with the money only being released when the author turned in a short story that fit the objective requirements (e.g. word count, theme, style) set by the group of patrons before some deadline. Of course, it will take work for an author to get enough fans starting out that eventually some of them would pay, but that's a problem in any system where artists want to get paid. Van Gogh had the benefit of strong European copyright laws, but only ever sold one painting in his life. There's just no easy way to get popular and sustain it.

So in 17th Century Europe you had playwrites coming up with pretty much rehashes of the same theme over and over again because that is what the patrons of the arts liked and would pay for.

You've described the summer blockbuster movie genre -- i.e. 'lots of crap blows up real good' -- perfectly.

Copyright rewards only popular works, even if they are crappy rehashes of the same old thing. It doesn't have anything to do with what's actually good. Nor should it, since the government is the last entity that we want making such decisions for anything beyond the odd public building, war monument, or building code.

Re:why do they keep trying?

[R2.0]

"Since he did not specify what sort of information, and did not say "each and every possible form of information", I'm wondering what the use is of pointing this out."

Hmmm, let me re-read the OP.

any sort of information

[emphasis added]

Ok. From Websters:

* Main Entry: 1any
        * Pronunciation: \e-n\
        * Function: adjective
        * Etymology: Middle English, from Old English ænig; akin to Old High German einag any, Old English n one -- more at one
        * Date: before 12th century

1 : one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind: a : one or another taken at random b : every --used to indicate one selected without restriction
2 : one, some, or all indiscriminately of whatever quantity: a : one or more --used to indicate an undetermined number or amount b : all --used to indicate a maximum or whole c : a or some without reference to quantity or extent
3 a : unmeasured or unlimited in amount, number, or extent b : appreciably large or extended

And from the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:

"Each and every one":
Also, every last one; every single one. Every individual in a group, as in Each and every student must register by tomorrow, or I've graded every last one of the exams, or Every single one of his answers was wrong. All of these phrases are generally used for emphasis. The first, although seemingly redundant, has replaced all and every, first recorded in 1502. The first variant dates from the late 1800s, and both it and the second are widely used. Also see every tom, dick, and harry. Every mother's son (late 1500s) and every man Jack (mid-1800s) are earlier versions that refer only to males.

So, it appears that the definition of "any" effectively includes the definition of "each and every."

As for your "actual" comment:

"Even private information is routinely shared. You're just careful about with whom it is shared, preferring to restrict it to people you trust or to people who have a legitimate need to know. If you read the GP's text and immediately thought only of "gee I sure wouldn't want my credit card numbers plastered all over the WWW" then you're taking a deliberately narrow interpretation of a much broader point."

What point would that be? I believe that his point was that DRM/whatever will fail because of the natural tendency of humans to spread information. I believe his point is valid, but for the fact that his formulation was overly broad. You seem to think his point was "humans tend to spread information freely, but for certain classes of information which are shared in a more regulated manner". Which is in accordance with my interpretation, and is simply a subset of my more general criticism of the formulation of his statement.

In summary, if you are going to make a practice of pedantry, at least be good at it. If this is the best you can do, stop trying.