My friend Andreas Bovens, who is a Belgian graduate student studying Japanese copyright, has recently had his paper on DRM in Japanese mobile phones published in Japan Media Review.
If you are interested in technology in Japan and copyright, I highly recommend both Andreas’ blog as well as his paper on the topic.
Congratulations Andreas!
Closed Architectures for Content Distribution
This is one of those topics where I really don’t get the concern. I generally completely disagree with Lessig and crowd.
*) People will not put up with DRM. Cell phones that only accessed NTT approved websites would stop selling while people bought AU or Vodaphone or AirH” phones that accessed everything. So, you will always be able to access non DRMed stuff because any company that did otherwise would lose their market.
*) Stuff that is DRMed and therefore stops working after 2 months or when you switch phones will end up pissing people off enough that they will stop buying it in the future. If they don’t stop buying it then clearly they have no problem with it and it should be their right to buy it. I suspect for small $2 things like a cell-phone background image or a ringtone people really will not care but for anything more expensive like an e-book, people one bitten will not put up with it removing the market for DRMed stuff.
(Apple is going to run into this in a few years when iTMS people start wanting to use different devices. People are going to be angry that their $200-$1000 investment into iTMS music locks them into Apple only products)
*) The examples given by Andreas have no relavence to his arguments. Even with DRM Disney could still be influenced by “The Jungle Emperor”. That argument or datapoint as ZERO to do with anything DRM. It’s just an emotional non-sequitur. Copyright covers exact or near exact copying. It does not cover being influenced by.
*) TV DRM scaries me because of the lack of the ability to copy the news (therefore keeping proof of an event). But, even so, TV is quickly losing it’s relavents. What do I care if TV becomes DRMed? I no longer watch it. The current generation of college students use the net more then they watch TV. This trend will only continue. DRMed entertainment will lose to non-DRMed entertainment naturally IMO. No alarms need to be sounded.
*) As far as I know Japanese cell phones are no longer ahead of their western counterparts. In fact many phones in the west now have MORE features like the Treo 650, the PPC-6600, the Sony-Ericisson P901i. In fact I believe Vodaphone’s latest 3G series are all available in the west.
Thanks, Gen.
Reply to gman:
> Stuff that is DRMed and therefore stops working after 2 months or when you switch phones will end up pissing people off enough that they will stop buying it in the future. If they don’t stop buying it then clearly they have no problem with it and it should be their right to buy it. [...]
> [...] What do I care if TV becomes DRMed? I no longer watch it. The current generation of college students use the net more then they watch TV. This trend will only continue. DRMed entertainment will lose to non-DRMed entertainment naturally IMO. No alarms need to be sounded.
If I understand you correctly, you say that we shouldn’t worry about all this DRM stuff and let the market sort it out. Cory Doctorow would reply like this: “[A]ny market-correction for DRM will surely involve informed customers making good purchase decisions about the DRM in their devices. That’s what this debate is all about. The implicit, “Stop complaining and let the market sort it out” in these comments ignores the fact that complaints about DRM are vital to the market sorting it out.” I second Cory.
[Quote from http://boingboing.net/2005/01/02/cory_sets_drm_strawm.html ]
> The examples given by Andreas have no relavence to his arguments. Even with DRM Disney could still be influenced by “The Jungle Emperor”. That argument or datapoint as ZERO to do with anything DRM. It’s just an emotional non-sequitur.
The “The Jungle Emperor” example is only used to illustrate the assertion that the concept of creating-by-remixing is fundamental to all kinds of creations. I then continue my explanation with saying that “the act of reusing and copying concepts plays a fundamental role in the creative process. However, reproduction is also part of how people enjoy works, that is, after they are created.” And that’s where DRM comes in: it influences consumers because it determines the ways in which they can enjoy a work. To take it even further: for some enjoying a work also means reusing it in indirect (“being influenced by”) or direct (sampling, collage, etc.) ways… Needless to say, the samplers, collagists, etc. then easily bump into the DRM wall.
The samplers etc are the minority. You might be making the arguement that the world would be better if people could sample/copy directly reuse/remix stuff but the world has done incredibly well up to this point only allowing the influence method. There are very few musicians, movie makers, book makers, comic writers, creative people period up till this point that have directly copied stuff. 99.9999% of all creations are influence based which is not at all threatened by DRM.
The system of influence only based copying has got us to the point where we have thousands of movies created a year, tens of thousands of comics and magazines, hundreds of thousands of books, thousands of video games, etc. There is no evidence that changing to a direct copying/remixing style would effect that result for the better.
As for making people aware of DRM so they can make informed choices. I agree that’s a noble goal but I still believe even without being informed people will still come to their own conclusion that DRM sucks as soon as they hit the DRM roadblock on their own. At that point they will refuse to buy DRMed stuff ever again.
I want to add, I also think the rediculous part of the argument is we are talking about content controlled by people supporting DRM. The internet has made it possible for anybody to offer content. The majority of that content is not connected with any of these studios with DRM. Like the article today in Wired about the death of the Wall Street Journal, studios who DRM their stuff to death will only kill themselves off in the long run. People will just stop buying their content. It’s really that simple IMO. Why does it *REALLY* matter you can sample Brittany Spears or re-edit Star Wars Episode 3 because really that’s what your arguement boils down to. Studio stuff will be DRMed, non studio stuff will not. Non studio stuff will win.
> The samplers etc are the minority.
I’m not so sure about that.
> You might be making the arguement that the world would be better if people could sample/copy directly reuse/remix stuff but the world has done incredibly well up to this point only allowing the influence method. There are very few musicians, movie makers, book makers, comic writers, creative people period up till this point that have directly copied stuff. 99.9999% of all creations are influence based which is not at all threatened by DRM.
Not convinced. DRM puts severe restrictions on the flow of information; 1 unit of such information thus reaches a smaller audience, so I think it’s fair to say that each unit’s influence is somehow limited. For instance, imagine I want to copy certain parts of a DRMed resource in the context of academic research. Circumventing the DRM is hard, as the trafficking of circumvention tools is prohibited and I am not able to create my own. Available options: pay a lot of money for buying the whole resource, or else, use other resources. Both options will negatively affect my research process. So, while I don’t think that all “influence based” creative processes are threatened by DRM, it seems fair to say that a lot of them are increasingly *affected* by it.
I see that as similar to pay for websites. The second a site goes payfor only it’s readership generally disappears and people go else where.
DRMed data will make itself irrelavent.