The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan » ten reasons http://joshkagan.com Counsel for Technology, Entertainment, and Business Tue, 25 May 2010 22:59:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 2008 contact@JoshKagan.com (The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan) contact@JoshKagan.com (The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan) posts 1440
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The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan contact@JoshKagan.com No no http://singularitylaw.com/sing_white_small.jpg The Website and Blog of Joshua R. Kagan http://joshkagan.com 144 144 Ten Reasons Why DRM Schemes Are Bad For Society http://joshkagan.com/2008/09/20/10-reasons-why-drm-schemes-are-bad-for-society/ http://joshkagan.com/2008/09/20/10-reasons-why-drm-schemes-are-bad-for-society/#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 07:00:49 +0000 Joshua Kagan http://joshkagan.com/blog/?p=33
  • DRM promotes the premature obsolescence of devices and media. Digital formats and standards change all the time, and content that is restricted by DRM cannot be transitioned to a new format. In addition, many DRM schemes require communication with a central server to “authenticate” the product before it can be used.1 Once these servers are no longer maintained by the provider, the content can no longer be accessed.
  • DRM significantly narrows the audience that can experience DRM-restricted content because such content can only be accessed by particular devices in particular ways, and must be sold through particular outlets.
  • DRM is easily defeated by the professional pirates who are responsible for the vast majority of relevant industry losses that DRM schemes purport to target.
  • DRM schemes tend to inconvenience honest purchasers far more than they deter piracy. As Cory Doctorow jested in a recent presentation at Microsoft’s campus,2 “keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall.” Yet, in practice, casual users who legitimately purchased content are the ones who are most likely to be inconvenienced by DRM schemes.
  • Because they restrict future usage, DRM schemes are incompatible with open source and so-called “copyleft” licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons which are good for society.
  • DRM schemes and similar restrictions stifle artist creativity by putting distribution decisions solely in the hands of those distributors who have access to the restricted devices and DRM schemes.
  • DRM schemes freeze out competition by small and emerging businesses by preventing new players from distributing their content to owners of existing devices. This is great news for conglomerates with established bases but awful news for newcomers and innovation in the industry.
  • DRM severely stifles product innovation by requiring that device manufacturers make products that copyright holders want instead of the products that would be best for consumers. Could the VHS recorder (as-is) be introduced for the first time in today’s market? Of course not; the MPAA would require all sorts of restrictions and “broadcast flags.” In a world of DRM, product innovation can never reach that height again.
  • DRM schemes raise the costs of distribution. Support costs for the inevitable inconveniences that DRM restrictions cause for legitimate purchasers (see #4 above) coupled with encoding and encryption costs mean that distributors need to spend significantly more to distribute and market content to end-users.
  • DRM schemes enable content owners to force outdated business models even when newer, superior ones are available that would be preferable to consumers.
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    1. iTunes music, some video games, and a lot of other popular DRM-restricted content require authentication processes on each device that will access the content because they need to retrieve a unique encryption cipher.
    2. See http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt for a complete transcript of Doctorow’s talk.
    ]]>     http://joshkagan.com/2008/09/20/10-reasons-why-drm-schemes-are-bad-for-society/feed/ 0     Ten Reasons Why Free and Open Source Software is Good for Society http://joshkagan.com/2008/08/11/10-reasons-open-source/ http://joshkagan.com/2008/08/11/10-reasons-open-source/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:07:07 +0000 Joshua Kagan http://joshkagan.com/blog/?p=29
  • Free software1 promotes the study and improvement of computer programming methods.
  • Free software licenses like the GPL ensure that the whole community of users can benefit whenever an improvement is discovered, not just a few who “discovered it first.”
  • Open source code can be used to solve absolutely any problem for which it is suited or can be made to be suited, including new problems that the original programmer did not foresee.
  • Widespread use of certain free software applications like browsers promotes better security by making code available to audit by security experts.
  • Free software licenses like the LGPL promote efficiency by ensuring that good code snippets can be used again and again in new programs.
  • In the private sector, companies that contribute to free software can increase commercial innovation instead of participating in expensive patent cross-licensing lawsuits.
  • Free software promotes competition and improvement in the computer support industry because everyone has equal access to learn about the inner workings of open source code.
  • Free software projects provide outlets for the creative energies of populations who are dissatisfied with the status quo.  Don’t believe me?  Look at Firefox, which sparked an entire movement toward more standards-compliant HTML rendering.
  • Free software, when made available for download from the Internet, puts power in the hands of computer users worldwide, even in developing and oppressed areas of the planet.
  • Free software promotes global unity by permitting people from all over the world to contribute to projects and collaboratively resolve real-world problems.
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    1. It’s important to understand that I’m not referring to software that is merely “free as in beer” meaning that it is given away without cost, but specifically software that is “open” in that its source code may be used, studied, and modified without restrictions.  Another term for this is “free, libre, and open-source software” or “FLOSS.”
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