TedPage: Talking about DRM

When we start talking about DRM a lot of issues get thrown together, which I think clouds the discussion. While they're all related, they do confuse the conclusions that one can draw. What are the rights of content creators? How should they view their works? What is possible with today's technology? What should content creation tools do to help navigate this maze? How does all of this change in an era where distribution of digital content is effectively free?

Basically the way that copyright law is written, the author maintains all rights to a created work unless he allows someone else to use it. Typically this grant of usage is done over a very specific context, like for personal use, or only with in the United States. This isn't a requirement of the law, you could even do something entirely convoluted like "you can only use it for one minute increments on the third Tuesday of the month."

The law also specifies fair use. Fair use more relates to what a consumer can expect if a particular piece of content is distributed to that user. If you buy a book, you'd expect to have the right to read that book. If you didn't distribute the content to anyone, fair use would never apply to that content. Fair use also allows for some amount of usage of that content, for instance I'm able to quote copyright content as an example, or in a review of a book for instance. This is also fair use, as long as I'm not copying the entire book into my own work.

Copyright holders tend to try and give away as few rights as possible, especially when the holders of the copyrights are corporations. While this is typically annoying, it is their right to do so, as long as it doesn't restrict fair use. Which, as I mentioned above, is a very murky requirement based on the distribution. It would be nice if these copyright holders would see the value of derivative works, how that gives them additional marketing outlets for their works. But, I don't think any law should require them to do this,.

The DRM technologies today are focused on restricting more than allowing. They're more worried about the negative users of material, and punishing those users, than truly allowing for all rights available with that content. In many ways this is a technological restriction. It would be very difficult for any technology to understand all the idiosyncrasies of the rights granted. Can you imagine a DVD player that could tell the difference between public and private performances? Would it check for ticket sales at the door? This doesn't mean that the concept of DRM is incorrect, if a system could be designed that would take into account all rights, including fair use, it would be a fair system. I think such technology is a long way off.

The tools that you use should help you try and navigate through this complex world of copyright. The last thing a visual designer wants to do is a run an billboard nationally with a picture that he only has rights to in New York. While I'm sure that in this case the copyright holder is willing to talk about modifying the rights granted, the cost just went up significantly. While this case would be hard for a computer to detect, well defined (and relatively broad) licenses like the Creative Commons ones could be enforced by software today. While this could be seen as 'babysitting' the user, asking them before formatting their hard drive is a good idea too.

With distribution costs decreasing, and DRM systems that are woefully inadequate for handing the complexities of copyright law, what do we do today? On an individual level, I think we should encourage the use of the Creative Commons licenses. They are well defined, and they cover over 90% of the wishes of content creators. On the governmental level I think that we should pass a simple law that says this:

Any system (mechanical, electrical, software or otherwise) that unduly restricts fair use is illegal. Use of such a system to a distribute a copyright work voids the copyright holder's rights over the work.

Then, at the end of the day we'll let the lawyers sort it all out.