There is an ancient Brahmin saying that goes like so: “When the desire to possess disappears – The joy appears”

The concept of the catch-and-release model may be much older than we think!

I didn’t notice that you had tagged this post with DRM and IPR. So it is a particular usage of DRM you’re suggesting (rather than a general idea that might require DRM). I guess, scratch the whole part where I assumed otherwise. My criticism of DRM still stands, but let’s put that aside for the time being.

Interestingly, with catch-release, the issues surrounding accessibility of content you buy, when the technology changes, is less of an issue, because there is no ownership of the copies. Now I see what you were getting at (I think?)

DVDs, books, CDs are physical containers for information. We access the information through these containers. They are physical objects constrained to be in one place at one time. We can extract the information, or duplicate the container (more or less) and everything inside, but that takes extra effort, and it’s more natural to move the container from one place or another.

Digital media is already pure information. We largely no longer deal with the containers—the hard drives, flash memory, volitile RAM, etc. Sure, we reference them by files or packets, but that’s meta-level organization that is also just pure information. The only way of taking information in one place and placing the same elsewhere is making a copy. “Moving” it is another step—we copy, then delete the source.

We can see why trying to regard already pure information like physical containers feels so unnatural. And we’ve heard the discussion about DRM—and the dangers it imposes.

I’m guessing you’re not trying to get at some specific DRM model.

Maybe the main cool thing about BookCrossing we’re trying to reproduce translates to local caching of only the stuff you’re using at the moment. I really respect that point. Streaming media aims to do the same, but is only useful when there is a sufficiently fast and reliable network connection, something not always possible or convenient. So having an entire working copy is often much better.

But this working copy takes up space, so when it’s not being used, we get rid of it. But why impose a system that forces you to do so? (Not saying you’re necessarily requiring this.) Is mainly to make the content providers happier? Automate the process as you’d like, it amounts, again, to deleting a copy. Anything further, and we’re back at DRM.

Using the example of music, the DRM version of this is, from what I know, the download portion of the Rhapsody music service. It seems nice until you realize that you’re very limited in how you can listen to music—only through the Rhapsody program, or in approved players. It tries to reproduce the behavior of physical containers, but it doesn’t map.

With Netflix, you get the DVDs, and you can play it in any DVD player you want. (Region coding and DeCSS issues aside.) With BookCrossing or even the public library, you can read the books you acquire standing up, lying down, in red light, through a magnifying glass. You can have someone else read it aloud to you.

We need to get away from confusing physical objects with the information they contain, and also recognize that digital content (below the level of the hard drive) is already free of physical constraints (in itself).

So what I can salvage is really the part about storage. I think this reduces to better stream-on-demand. This depends on a faster, more robust connection between the endpoint and the cloud, and ensuring that the content is delivered in a standard, open way (across content providers).

There’s a chance I completely misunderstood this whole thing. I’m also musing lazily.