What Cory Doctorow wishes Tim Berners-Lee understood about DRM
Cory Doctorow’s latest article in The Guardian addresses the idea of putting DRM in HTML5. Here however is what I find to be the most interesting bit and a salient point:
Compare DVDs to CDs. CDs had no DRM, so it was legal to invent technologies like the iPod and iTunes, which ripped, transcoded and copied music for personal uses. DVDs featured DRM, so it was illegal to add any features to them, and in the nearly 20 years since they were introduced, no legal technologies have been introduced to the market that do what iTunes and the iPod did in 2001. One company tried to ship a primitive DVD hard-drive jukebox and got sued out of that line of business. 20 years of DVDs, zero innovations. Now, DRM has not stopped people from making illegal copies of DVDs (obviously!), but it has entirely prevented any innovative legal products from entering the market for two decades, with no end in sight.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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