Kris Tuttle makes a very interesting point in his comment on my last post.
I have watched with awe as my children share their buying rationales with me, for devices as well as “content”. What they see value in, what they abhor. The polyphonic ringtones example is a classic.
Even if we got conned downstream, many of us were attracted by adjectives like “green” and “organic”.
Generation M will look for different kitemarks. Shareable. Copiable. Mashable.
Note that they don’t look for Free as in Gratis. It has always been Free as In Freedom for them.
While we mope around trying to look for just Playable.
I look forward to seeing things marked SCM for Shareable Copiable Mashable. Or maybe the Creative Commons CC already does this…
Thanks, Kris.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Not free as in gratis but free as in Freedom. Work on it a little and I think you may have aa great line.
Don’t mention it.
Years ago I did some consulting for a number of DRM companies including InterTrust (acquired by Microsoft) and PreView Systems. The one that I found very interesting was called Reciprocal Systems (they are gone now I think.)
What they had was a management and clearinghouse for your rights around purchased content. So let’s say you buy something and register those rights with Reciprocal, then you can exercise them based on what’s allowed including being able to have your content delivered to you in different places and different formats or exchanging those rights with someone else via a sale or gift.
It wouldn’t work for any unauthorized copy but anything legitimate would be handled. The positive aspect of it is that you get some freedom and flexibility to use your content in exchange for allowing rights management. [As an aside this also eliminates the obsessive need to keep original recordings around in case of a computer crash where you lose the encoded version somehow...]
The problem in the implementation is that the rights holders are very difficult to manage and often things like copyright and distribution rights vary by country which is a nightmare on the Internet. So it’s a very hard problem to solve well and I expect that’s part of the reason Reciprocal never made it as a company despite all their promise.
In the end I think there is some very sophisticated technology that could help solve these problems in a user friendly way IF there were really enlightened leaders in the entertainment industry. I guess that’s enough said on that one! ;-)
Kris, I agree with you that “very sophisticated technology” would be needed to do a DRM system that can actually tell legit uses, including fair use and new uses enabled by new technologies, apart from infringement.
In order to do a DRM system that isn’t the copyright equivalent of enforcing trespassing law with a machine gun on a motion detector, you’d basically have to invent an AI that would be qualified for the Supreme Court.
Of course, such an AI would have other economically valuable applications, too, outside the “is this allowable use of copyrighted materials or not” area. You could also put it to work doing job interviews, selecting publishable fiction, and refereeing sports.
Re Malc’s comment. know that Malc is just winding me up. Of course I was referring to Stallman. But like using Cluetrain and Markets are Conversations, after a while I have stopped repeated references. Maybe I shouldn’t, because otherwise (as Malc gently points out … ) people may think I claim the line as mine…. which could be a problem for those reading this blog for the first time. So from now on mea culpa, I will make sure that the reference is put in.
When I post via BlackBerry I tend to be lazy, but what I now know to do is to go back to the post and make the requisite links.
Thanks Malc.
Actually, believe it or not, I hadn’t actually heard that line before!