Comments on: Musing gently about complex adaptive systems and DRM

By: JP

JP — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:46:50 +0000

Kevin, you make an important point. Unless we are really careful with what we design, and unless we make some radical changes to our approach, “cloud computing” will get crushed under its own weight as we make it more and more complex. Not everyone will succeed.

While I agree with you that both SaaS as well as cloud computing have hosted environments as their core, I think they represent a lot more than that. That’s where the complexity enters. That’s where the radical approaches are called for. That’s where success or failure will be courted.

By: Kevin Magee

Kevin Magee — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:44:57 +0000

I certainly agree about the emergence of complex adaptive systems especially around IT in corporations. One interesting trend which you didn’t mention which is likely to make these systems even more complex concerns Cloud computing or the old SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Some companies will embrace the power of these hosted environments (because that’s what they really are when you take away the fancy marketing terms), other companies will try to embrace them and end up with even more complex environments than before they started.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming months and years.

By: Carsonified » Blog Archive » Interoperability: The rise of Music as Mobile Content.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:53:34 +0000

[...] The insightful J P Rangaswami perfectly summed up why DRM is always destined to fail on his Confused of Calcutta blog this week. Companies that really get it are going from strength to strength like the [...]

By: JP

JP — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:18:32 +0000

The three of you make the points I was trying to make more succinctly than I did:

1. DRM makes customers out to be criminals. This is not a sustainable moral or social position; with customers more and more in control, it will fail.

2. DRM is getting harder and harder to do technically, as both data and device migrate out of central control into the hands of the user; as the trend increases, it will fail.

3. DRM, like all other forms of IPR, is meaningless without the regulations that “empower” it. Since this regulation tends to be post-facto, it will fail.

There was a larger, more general point I was also trying to make. As in the case of power, as in the case of markets, when DRM does fail there will be a meltdown.

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:40:15 +0000

It’s hard to consider DRM without its legal environment. Anticircumvention laws such as the DMCA in effect give DRM designers the power to legislate.

By: Dave Walker

Dave Walker — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:54:50 +0000

Also, don’t forget that, where the whole of the data and the device with the smartness to render it, are both in a physical environment under the control of the user, rather than the control of the owner of the data, DRM is a provably impossible concept…

By: Dominic Travers

Dominic Travers — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:15:35 +0000

You’re absolutely and eloquently bang on right about DRM today. The earlier analogy with anti skate measures really illustrates the full range of this issue. Thanks.